


Hero of My Own Story

by Pandoras_loss



Series: The Eve Gilbert Series [3]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:40:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 86
Words: 403,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21712366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandoras_loss/pseuds/Pandoras_loss
Summary: Life doesn't always work out the way we think it will, and Eve Gilbert knows that better than most.  It's full of twists and turns, a lot of them dark, especially for a vampire hunter.  It's easy to get lost, and harder to find the right path when your only guides are vampires, harder still when the one person you were supposed to protect becomes one.  A shifting of priorities might be required, or maybe that already started a long time ago.  Well if they did, then it was all thanks to Damon and her other close friends.  The list might be small, but she does have one, and Elena may or may not be on it anymore.Takes place during season 4 of the show.
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Tyler Lockwood, Damon Salvatore/Original Female Character(s), Elena Gilbert/Stefan Salvatore
Series: The Eve Gilbert Series [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1039037
Comments: 225
Kudos: 161





	1. And So It Begins

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, I do not own the rights or credit for creating The Vampire Diaries or the characters from the book/show, including: Elena Gilbert, Damon Salvatore, Stefan Salvatore, Bonnie Bennet, Caroline Forbes, Tyler Lockwood, Isobel Flemming, Katherine Pierce, and John Gilbert, to name a few.
> 
> Original characters created by me: Eve Gilbert, Alice, and Imelda
> 
> I'd recommend reading the first two books in the series, Are We Friends? and Life After Death first.

The first thing I noticed about my new predicament was that I could breathe, which in some respects was an improvement on my previous situation. The next thing that stood out to me, aside from the obvious anguish going on all around me, was that I was acutely aware of being dead. I remembered everything right up to and including my death. I didn’t know if that happened the last time I died. Maybe it did, and I’d forget this the way I forgot that, but remembering this place sure had seemed to be a big part of Alec’s problem, so I didn’t have much hope this would be forgotten. The last, and probably most important detail about where I was now seemed to be that I was still in the dark.

I mean, there was a lot going on around me. There were screams and wails blending together to an everlasting crescendo. It was deafening, but I couldn’t see any of it. It also meant that I was basically down by two senses until I got used to the noise, and I didn’t like that much. I automatically lifted my hands to see if I could remove the blindfold, only to find that there was no blindfold. What I found was much more horrifying than that. 

I think I may have preferred to find that my eyes had simply sewn closed, because if they had been, then I could find a way to tear the sutures and get them open, but I didn’t appear to have any eyes at all. It wasn’t like they’d been ripped out and there were big gaping holes where they should be either. They just weren’t there. All that was there was skin where my eyes were supposed to be, and that more than the screams was my first clue that I should’ve listened to everyone around me when they told me not to do this. 

My hands shook ever so slightly as I lowered them back to my sides, and my hands did not shake, like ever. They were the steadiest hands I knew . . . so my eyesight was definitely out, but what was I always saying? Your mind was the strongest weapon you had . . . Wait. Was it possible that I did this to myself . . . I mean I had been dead set on keeping my eyes closed while I was here, but I hadn’t known how to do that, so I’d taken precautions on the outside against it . . . Maybe I did do this, but if I did, then I didn’t think it had anything to do with being blindfolded when I died. 

As a solution to a problem in the real world that followed the laws of nature, it wouldn’t have been a bad one, and it did help get me prepared mentally for this, but this place was so disconnected from reality that a blindfold out there would have no impact on anything going on in here. The most likely reason this happened was that I had no interest in the future, and that was the demon die's sole purpose . . . to provide the future to people who would kill to get it. If I didn’t want that, and I didn’t want to get wrapped up in all of this horror, then I suppose this is something I might come up with as a strategy on some level. I did have a tendency to go overboard on things. Of course I’d just go and make myself completely eyeless. 

So much for making myself stare at a stone for a good minute in preparation for this. So much for a lot of things . . . Okay, so how could I use this to my advantage? For one, it meant that I wasn’t necessarily bound by what you would consider normal. If I didn’t want to see, I could make myself blind. If I wanted to fly, I could probably do that too. Alec said the demon die had claimed me as it’s master, and I hadn’t understood what that meant. I’d mostly thought that it meant that when I died, this thing would bring me here, and I’d have no say in it, which didn't make me seem like much of a master, but maybe being it’s master literally meant that I was master over myself and my reality inside this world when I got here. 

Did that mean that the people this thing killed didn’t have that luxury? Were they the screams I could hear? The voices had to come from somewhere. They weren’t just all in my head, and how many of them were there? The numbers I was hearing brought home that this was a lot worse than I'd thought it was, and they were real people. That could be what made this place so terrifying that you had no choice but to turn a blind eye to it and instead force yourself to watch what the future had in store for you. If you didn’t, then you’d be stuck facing a real hell with real people who were 100% innocent and still being tortured. 

They hadn’t chosen to come here. They’d been snatched from their lives and brought here against their will . . . but the people who used the die knew what it did. They weren't here against their will. Why would they be so scared to see what was happening around them if they were willing to roll the die and put more people in its Hell? I suppose it was because the things being done to these people were pretty damn bad, as bad as the imaginations of a person could get, and humans had the capacity to imagine some pretty awful things. If you ever had any kind of a conscience in the first place, it probably eroded over time if you used the die enough times, and you stopped caring about what was happening to anyone else who was here. At that point you came here just to see what was happening in the future and ignored what was going on around you. 

What happened when you died for good though? Did you still get master privileges for having brought however many souls here when you were alive, or did you become part of the screaming masses. That would put a whole new spin on why a person might be afraid to look anywhere but the future, because in a way, your real future was to be a part of the very thing you were trying to ignore, and that wasn’t a future anyone wanted to see.

If all that was true, then how did Alec’s Dad get free? It might be because he was a hunter and put the research in on it, so he knew a few loopholes, but maybe when he died before Alec came to Mystic Falls, his time hadn’t been as up as anyone thought. If he knew that when his body died because of something he saw in his future here, then he would've known he'd have a second chance, and maybe because he did, he’d been afforded a certain amount of freedom after his death, so he could be free to tag along when Jeremy came here. Oh god, Jeremy came here. 

He didn’t seem to remember it, but I really needed to talk to that kid, and now his sister . . . our sister was dead. I didn’t know how to feel about that, but I couldn’t allow myself to feel much of anything at the moment. I had to prioritize, and right now, the priority was finding Alec and figuring out a way to bring this place down, so these poor souls could find peace somewhere else. Then I had to get back home to Damon. 

I just had to figure out how to find Alec, or really where to go. Could I imagine myself being there and just show up wherever he was, or did it take a little more than that? I tried it, but nothing seemed to change, so I said it, “Take me to Alec,” and it’s not like I felt like I went anywhere that time either. The tenor of the screams around me didn’t change. There was a shrill one to my right that I was really focused on as a frame of reference, and it was still there. Maybe I needed to move? 

I took a step, and something about the ground felt off. My head tilted to the side, while I tried to figure out what it was. I didn't know, but alarm bells were going off in my head. I was very grateful to be wearing my boots. Did I have any weapons? I felt around in my pockets, and I didn’t have a gun, not that I could’ve seen to use it accurately anyway, but I did appear to have some stakes and a couple of daggers. I guess my imagination brought me in here prepared. Now, I just needed to get it to take me to Alec. 

I took another step, and hesitated once more at what felt like a crunch. It wasn’t a stone. What was it? Was the ground moving? It wasn’t quaking, but it did seem like it was vibrating. It almost felt like it was alive, like . . . maggots and worms. The moment I thought it, I couldn’t unthink it, but I was fairly certain that whoever created this landscape had been a fan of Dante. Luckily my Mom had The Divine Comedy in her syllabus the year we did mythology . . . was I where the Uncommitted souls go? 

I hadn’t even made it to hell yet. I still had to cross the Acheron, and I had no idea how much time I had left. It’d be a lot quicker if I could just wish myself to Alec . . . To do that, maybe what I needed to do was figure out where he was first. People who divined the future were in 8th circle weren’t they. I bet that’s where most of the previous masters were, but he really hadn’t used the die for that purpose. This die might not care about where it put the innocent people it took, but it did get a pretty good idea of who its masters were and probably knew where to put them.

Where would I put Alec? I guess I’d put him in Limbo, because he did roll the die, but he hadn’t thought it would work, and Jeremy may have died, but Jeremy also came back, so it should go in Alec’s favor, and he’d sacrificed himself for other people. I’d start there. 

If he wasn’t in Limbo, then I didn’t know if lust was his biggest sin, but I didn’t get the impression that it was, so I could check in the second circle, but I didn’t think he’d be there. Not gluttony or greed . . . maybe wrath. His Dad may be in the fifth circle too, but that’s where I was going next, if Alec wasn’t in Limbo, and if he wasn’t there, then I had no choice but to just keep going. I was going to be the Virgil to his Dante, and if I couldn’t figure out what kind of sacrifice it would take to destroy this world in the time I had, then even if I had to create it myself, I was going to at least get him to something that resembled Paradise.


	2. The Sullen

Limbo wasn’t so bad. I managed to whisk myself here after I pinpointed something I thought I might see, like the brook by the seven gates. That told me that I wouldn’t be able to go to a person, because this entire reality was created by an inanimate object that had no understanding of who people were by name. It wasn’t an intelligent, thinking, feeling being. It just had places you could go, and to get to them, you had to have at least read Dante’s _Inferno_. I had, but I’d had a fairly unconventional education. How many people here hadn’t? 

_Inferno_ was written in the 1400s, so the necromancer’s talisman that created this Hell could be at least that old. Maybe it was older than that, and Dante had actually rolled the die and been here himself if he knew it well enough to describe it. It could be very old. That might explain the sheer volume of screams, but there couldn’t be billions here. There couldn’t even be millions. There were probably thousands, at best, and their voices were amplified to make the effect that much louder. Thousands were still too many. 

The talisman had been slipping under the radar for far too long, and I understood why a group of hunters had decided to kill the last necromancer who’d had it. It probably wasn’t the first necromancer, the one who’d made it, because that necromancer had been dead for a long time by then. It’d just passed through the hands of a lot of witches and necromancers and the random people it used to bring them back after that. The magic that kept this Hell going saw to it that it would be passed around that way, because souls were what fueled it.

Then the hunters in Alec’s family tree, who wound up with the talisman, could’ve destroyed it, but instead, they started using it too, so they could come back when they were killed. If I didn’t succeed in destroying this Hell from the inside, then I was going to have to have Imelda destroy the talisman. I hadn’t rolled the die, and as long as nobody touched the die out there in the real world and died to bring me back, then the talisman couldn’t claim my soul. I gave it to Imelda to keep that from happening, so I didn't think I'd be coming back here when I died again. Protecting myself wasn't the reason this place needed to be destroyed.

If all else failed, then I couldn’t be another person who let the talisman continue on its way collecting souls as it went. I couldn’t allow even one more person to be brought here. I just wasn’t sure how I’d be able to live with myself if I turned my back on all these people. They’d be wiped out of existence right along with the talisman. To go through what they’d been through, to probably be tortured beyond repair, and then just wind up with nothing? Well, maybe right now, they’d take that over having to suffer like this for another moment, but I really had to do whatever I could to give them something better than that.

I knew I was in Limbo when I got there, because I could still hear the shrill scream I’d noted earlier, but it was behind me now, and overall, screams seemed to be muted here. The Uncommitted where I’d been had been running around being stung by wasps and hornets forever, and I wondered briefly if I’d landed there for a reason. The Uncommitted were where they were, because they hadn’t chosen a side in life. They weren’t good or bad. They were just opportunists. 

Some of those things sounded a little familiar. I did have a tendency to put myself in the middle of a fight and go against both sides. It pissed a lot of people off, even people I cared about, but it seemed like the right thing to do to keep the peace and help people. It wasn’t easy, and maybe there was some guilt involved, like the metaphorical sting of wasps would be, so I probably did end up there for a reason, but screw this place if that’s why it put me there, because I wasn’t an opportunist. Being stuck in the middle, and sometimes being the only one who was trying to do the right thing did anything but create opportunities for me. Hopefully, it ultimately benefited those who needed it the most if I was doing my job right.

Right now, my job was finding Alec. I might be able to lead him out of here, but I also needed someone to be my eyes. In a place like this, it’d be good to have someone watching my back, the only person I knew, and possibly one of the few people in the entire universe who’d managed to earn my trust enough for me to believe he would watch my back. That is why he was here. He sacrificed himself to save both me and Jeremy. He saw me as family, and I wanted to live up to that. 

Now, how to find him? Might as well use the relative quiet of Limbo to see if he could hear me. I yelled his name as loud as I could and didn’t get anything back in response, so I tried again, and again, and again. I was about to give up and move on when I heard what sounded like my name coming back to me. 

It wasn’t close. I wasn’t even sure that it was in Limbo, but it was there . . . or was I imagining it? I could be making something out of nothing. Wishful thinking . . . but then I didn’t have eyes either, because of my wishful thinking, so hearing him might be possible, and if I was right about this place really only having a few thousand souls, whose voices were amplified to create an auditory illusion that made it sound like millions, then maybe he could hear my voice, and I could hear him. I tried again, and heard my name almost immediately after that. 

Turning to my right, I tried to pinpoint where he might be, but it was impossible. Limbo was really more of a faux-paradise, but everything in the direction that'd come from was the real hell . . . well as real as a magical die that created it could be, and that meant that most of the screaming was coming from that direction. Well, there was no other way out, but through. I should start in the fifth circle, but where in the fifth circle? A boat sounded like the best place to be if I was going to a cesspit full of people fighting. _Phlegyas’s boat it is._

I focused on it, tried to visualize what it might look like from what I could remember reading about it, and in almost no time at all, I went from being in peaceful surroundings on solid ground to the heart of the chaos. Here, they didn’t even sound like screams anymore. They were as one voice, an ever present cacophony of animalistic sound. It was disorienting. I felt the ground under my feet give way, and remembered that I was on a boat almost too late to stop myself from toppling out of it. I caught myself at the last second and immediately crouched down to better my balance. I did not want to go into these waters. 

According to the text, the water should be slimy. It certainly smelled of rotten flesh to the point that I thought I might be sick, but then I reminded myself that none of this was really real, not even my stomach was real, so I had nothing to get sick with let alone a reason to be sick. The waters should be filled with people fighting . . . half were fighting above water, and after my ears acclimated to the sound, I could hear them splashing around . . . others were below the water. They were known as the sullen, the passively wrathful. That’s where I suspected Alec might be, and if the demon die got to know me better, then this was probably where it would send me. I did have some anger issues . . . okay, they were more than issues. I was angry all the time.

Speaking of time, I was starting to feel like I was running out of it. I didn’t know how time worked in here compared to how it worked out there, but my ring could be yanking me back to the land of the living at any moment. I should try calling for Alec again. It’d worked from far away, so it might work again, but I didn’t hold much hope that it would in all this ruckus. 

“Alec!” Nothing. I waited, and tried again. Nothing. Getting to my feet, so I could take a deeper breath, I imagined my voice was going through a megaphone, and yelled again. “Alec!” It worked in making me a lot louder, but you wouldn’t know it from where I was standing, because everything around me got louder too, like it was trying to drown me out. If this was really, real, then my ears would probably be bleeding right about now. “Son of a bitch.” If everything was getting louder around me, it meant he had to be here, right? That was this place’s way of keeping him here. 

Well, then how about this? I steadied myself in the middle of the boat, squared my shoulders, and put every ounce of authority I possessed into my voice. “Quuiieett!” The sound immediately dropped out. I mean it went dead quiet with the exception of the splashing I could still hear going on in the waters around me, and I experienced something I couldn’t really explain, but it felt transformative. 

Maybe other people had seen it sooner, and there were definitely a lot of people who hadn’t. I’m not sure I ever would’ve believed it myself if it weren’t for that single moment in time. Call it being a living legend. Call it whatever you wanted, but I was already the hunter I never thought I’d be, and it may seem like the power had gone to my head, but how could I not think that? Look at where I was, alone in a boat in the middle of the marshes in the 5th circle of Hell. People out there in the real world may not listen to me, but here, I wasn’t a joke. I was formidable, and believing that I was, even if only for a moment, was a confidence boost I hadn’t known I’d needed.

Turning my attention to the waters around me, I tried again in my normal voice. “Alec!”

I heard a garbled, “Eve,” come from somewhere to my left, some splashing and gurgling, and then it was gone again. He was here, and he was below the water. I knew him better than I’d thought. How I’d heard him all the way in Limbo, I didn’t know, but maybe I’d done the same thing with my hearing that I’d just done with my voice without realizing it. Turning my head in the direction of Phlegyas, who was steering this thing, I pointed to where I’d heard Alec. “Take me to him.” I felt the boat shift as he stuck his paddle into the water. We glided and bumped into tussling bodies every so often for I don’t know how long, but eventually, I felt us slow. We were close, and I didn’t think I’d need to yell. “Alec?”

I heard a dispersion of bubbles coming up on our right and scrambled to the other side of the boat, but he couldn’t make it all the way up to the surface this time. The talisman was throwing everything it had at him in an effort to keep him, while still trying to play by my rules, since I was the game master in here right now. “Alec?”

I heard the bubbles again. He couldn’t get out by himself. He needed help. I stuck my hand into the water and reach down as far as my arm would let me to see if I could find him. “Alec?”

I felt something brush against my fingertips, but it was quickly dragged back down. “Let him go!” It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t a desperate plea. It was a command, and a moment later, a hand grasped onto mine. I tugged on it and got it as far as the surface, but couldn’t get him any further. “Come on, Alec . . . fight . . . You didn’t fight for yourself your whole life . . . you internalized it, and that is why you are where you are. Fight . . . get the anger out . . . if you can’t do it for you, then do it for me, because I’m not leaving here without you.” 

I breathed a sigh of relief when the hand gripped mine tighter. It pulled, like it was trying to help me pull it up, and then the body attached to it started to sink again. “Okay . . . Okay, I’m coming in after you.” The hand started trying to tug again to come back to the surface, but I’d already made up my mind. Two tugs later, and I was reaching for one of my stakes with my free hand as I rolled overboard. 

The hand I was still holding onto sank, like a stone, dragging me down with it, and I yanked up on it to try and slow our decline. I felt some give in the tension as the body the hand was attached to floated up in my direction, and the moment it got close enough, I let go of the hand and traded it for wrapping my arms around the body’s midsection. With my arms under his, I held tight and kicked with everything that I had. _Come on, Alec, help me out here._

I made some headway and had to keep reminding myself that I was dead and therefore did not need air, but it was really hard to do after a lifetime of needing to breathe to stay alive. I got Alec and I as close to the surface as possible. My head even broke through to the top, and I was able to take a massive breath before he started dragging me back down again. _If you don’t want to fight, then I will make you fight._ I’d thought it might come to this. That’s why I’d brought the stake.

Holding on to him tightly with my left arm, so he couldn’t get away from me, I felt us start to fall as I stopped kicking and quickly stabbed him in the side. Oh, he did not like that. He started to thrash around, so he could get me off of him, and instead of falling, we started to ascend, but it wasn’t enough. I wrapped my legs around him, so he couldn’t get away from me, removed the stake from his side and quickly plunged it into his stomach. That did it. He hauled back with his elbow, and cracked me in the ribs. The second he did, we both shot up to the top and broke through to the surface. “Damn it, Eve, that hurts!” I couldn’t help but giggle at the massive accomplishment. “Oh, you think that’s funny?”

“Yeah . . . yeah, I do.”

A moment later, he broke out into his own fit of laughter. “Did anyone ever tell you that you suck at hellos?”

More than once, actually. Exhaling another laugh, I paddled in the direction I thought the boat was. “Let’s get you in the boat. I don’t think this place is going to give you up without a fight.” 

I could hear the waves lapping up against the sides of the ferry, and stuck my hand out to find it. My fingers wrapped around the edge, and I thrust my other hand out in his direction, trying to find him. Grabbing his forearm, I pulled him towards me, and he asked, “What’s with the sound?”

“I turned it off.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I told it to be quiet.” He laughed again as he grabbed onto the boat, and I got the impression that he wanted me to go first. “After you . . . I wasn’t kidding, I don’t think this is going to be easy at all. I’ll be right in after you.” 

I felt the boat dip down and heard him start to pull himself out, but he stopped about halfway and a few seconds later fell back into the water. “Think I’m stuck . . . can’t really see what - ”

“Wait here. As soon as you’re in the clear, I’ll let you know. Don’t wait around for me just get in the boat.”

“Eve – “

I didn’t let him finish that thought. Diving down, I felt for his leg that was closest to me, found it, and tried to locate what was keeping him here . . . Some kind of seaweed that’d wrapped itself around his ankle. Putting my stake into the back of my waistband, I grabbed one of the daggers I had, and used that to cut it. Holding onto that leg to keep anything else from attaching itself to him, I reached over to his other leg, found the seaweed wrapped around that one, and cut it too, before pushing him up. It wasn’t a subtle signal for him to get his ass in gear, and he followed it to perfection. 

His feet broke through the surface of the water, and I went to follow him, but something snaked its way around my calf and tightened. It started to pull me away from the surface, and I went to reach down and cut it, but another slimy piece of kelp slithered its way around my wrist to stop me, and I plummeted further away from where I wanted to go. Transferring the dagger to my other hand, I cut the seaweed around my other wrist, and two more pieces wrapped around both wrists to keep me from cutting any more. I didn’t know how far I fell before I realized that the demon die wanted a trade. If I let Alec go, then it wanted me in his place. 

I briefly thought that this might just be the sacrifice that had to happen for me to destroy this place, but before I could commit to it one way or the other, I was released, and shot up towards the surface. I broke through, like some kind of flying fish, and landed back in the water on the other side of the boat. Treading water, I coughed up whatever putrid liquid had gone into my mouth and heard Alec. “What the hell was that? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. I think I just pissed it off.” 

Maybe this place was more sentient than I’d thought. It obviously could read my mind, and it knew now that I was serious about destroying it. It also knew that I knew how to do it, and it was going into survival mode. That gave me leverage. Alec would be getting out of here even if nobody else did, and maybe when I got him out, I could get the rest out one-by-one if I had to do it that way. I started swimming to where Alec’s voice had been. “Uh, Eve?”

“What?”

I heard him say, “Shit,” a second before something big slammed into me from the left. I grunted at the impact, and then felt myself get pulled under by a pair of big burly arms. Dagger still in hand, I sliced at them and then jammed it in the torso of the thing grabbing me. I wriggled out of its hold and turned to face it, so I could stab it again, but was grabbed from behind by another set of arms. Great, so now I had to fight my way out of the straight up wrathful folks on the surface? 

My reflexes should be faster in here. I wasn’t held back by the limitation inherent to being in a body, and neither were they, but I knew how to fight. Twirling the dagger, I jabbed it over my right shoulder and right into this guy’s face before pulling it back and slamming it into his forearm. His hold loosened, and I turned to stab him in the neck. He let me go, and I got jumped by two more. One punched me in the jaw, and the other put its hand on top my head to push me under the water. 

I lashed out in any way I could, left, right, up, down . . . anywhere I felt an arm or a leg, and there a lot of them at this point, all punching and kicking and grabbing at me to pull me down. I was so focused on them that I forgot that I wasn’t drowning and started fighting to breathe. I broke through the surface, heard an angry voice that sounded a lot like Alec not that far from me, “Where do you think you’re goin’ - ,” and got dunked again. I sliced and diced my way back to the top. “Leave her alone, and you can have – “ I was submerged again and quickly thought. _You let him finish that thought and follow through on it, he becomes the sacrifice, and you’re done._

The fighting immediately stopped. I floated back up to the top, and listened out around me. The sounds of water fighting were still there, but the ones around me were moving away. I bet they weren’t real people, more like a simulated version of people. The people I could still hear fighting out there were real though. If the people who used the talisman to see the future were in the 8th circle, then most of the hunters were probably here in the 5th circle or the 7th where the murderers were. Alec was real, and he’d been stuck under the water. There had to be more people down there, and every real person here was being tortured by a simulation until this place had enough souls to make every role in here filled by a real person. 

I heard some sloshing near me, gripped my dagger, and turned to my left. “Alec?”

“Who else would it be?”

He got to me, and I answered, “Could be anyone.”

“How’d you get them to stop?”

“What makes you think it was me?”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t me . . . So, how’d you do it?”

“Uh . . . I gave the die a good reason to stop.”

“That’s all you’re gonna give me?”

I didn’t want to give him any ideas. “For now.”

“Good point . . . We should probably get going.”

“Sure. Lead the way.”

“Think I’ll make sure you get in there first this time.”

He hadn’t noticed yet, had he? My wet hair had been in my face the entire time. “You’re still gonna need to lead the way.”

“Wh – “ I pushed my hair out of the way. “Oh god, what happened to your eyes?”

“I'm the game master in here, right, so um . . . I think I must’ve taken your advice to keep my eyes closed a little too far?”

“That’s disgusting.”

“You sure know how to make a girl feel good about herself . . . Remind me again why I thought you were charming?” 

Reaching forward to smooth my hair back down over my face, he murmured, “There . . . Much better.”

I exhaled a short laugh. “Think of me as your Virgil.”

“My who?”

“You know . . . Dante’s _Inferno_. We’re sort of in the middle of it right now.”

“I’ve heard of it, never read it.”

“Well, lucky for you, I have, and Virgil was Dante’s blind guide.”

“That’s how you knew how to get me out of the water?”

“Technically, we’re still in it.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I knew why someone would be under the water, so I figured making you fight might work.”

“Yeah, you’re you, all right . . . So, I’ll tell you what I see, and you’ll tell me what to do and where to go?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Probably for the best. You really don’t want to see what we’re swimming in right now.”

“And you’re okay with that? I mean before you had to watch the future, or see all this, and you chose the future, which stole your memories. So, can you cope with seeing all of this now?”

“I don’t know how you think it works when you’re in that seat, but I didn’t have a choice to peek behind the curtain and see all this then. I heard probably what you’re hearing, and when I opened my eyes, all I could see was the future, like I was there . . . wasn’t some kind of choice I was able to make. If I’d known all this was really here, then I would’ve chosen this instead of forgetting everything. I’m a hunter, not much phases me.” 

“Oh.”

“Why, what’d you think would happen?”

“That there were like these screens with the future on them, or maybe those virtual reality headsets, something you could take off. I didn’t think I’d have as hard a time in here as a normal person would either, so I made sure the last thing I saw was really boring to keep me from wanting to see its future.”

“What was it?”

“A rock.” I heard him laugh and smiled, but then had to say, “But I also think you had to be aware on some level what was going on around you. I looked into it, and this thing operates on fear. That’s how it gets you to look, but it’s also how it gets you to keep watching the future, and by watching the future to the exclusion of everything else, it takes your memories . . . It’s magic, so that’s the price that’s paid for the future, and I don’t know what you were hiding from then. Maybe it wasn’t all this, because you’re not afraid of anything, but it was something. Maybe it was where you were going to wind up when you got back here. I don’t know how bad it was under the water, but I’m guessing watching the future was a better option, and from what I gather, the talisman has a pretty good read on what you’re thinking subconsciously as well as consciously, otherwise I’d have eyes.” 

“Does it bother you?”

I noticed that hadn’t answered the unspoken questions in what I’d said. ‘Am I right?’, ‘Do you think this might be where you came the last time?’, ‘What was it like down there?’ If he didn’t want to talk about it, then I should ignore those questions too, and I would, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up on it just yet. I didn’t know how much time we had, but I knew it wasn’t forever, so if he needed to talk about it with someone, then I wanted him to have his chance. “It did at first, but it’s really more of the same. I came into this as prepared as I could be. I’ve been wearing a blindfold the last couple of days . . . but you don’t have one, so are you all right with what you have seen?”

“I, uh . . . I haven’t seen much, Eve . . . been in permanent drowning mode, since I’ve been here.”

So, that was a definite hard pass on talking about it then. “And now that you’re above water?”

“Looking around . . . I’ve seen my fair share of barroom brawls, so out of everything I’m guessing is here, this isn’t too bad. Helps that the screams are gone. Wish I’d thought of that when I had the chance.”

“Makes it look more ridiculous?”

“Uh . . . at first, but if you look closer, it puts a whole new spin on suffering in silence.”

“Then stop looking closer. We should probably get going.”

“Where?”

“I’m getting you out.”

“You think you can?”

“Well, I’m not leaving you here. I know that.”


	3. Sacrificial Lamb

Alec pushed me into the boat first, and I helped pull him into it. After he was settled, he said, “Been meanin’ to ask . . . you know who this guy is?”

What guy? The one driving the boat? “I think he’s supposed to be a representation of Phlegyas.”

“That the guy you have to pay to bring you to the other side?”

“No, that’s Charon. You pay him to bring you across the river and into Hell.”

“Yeah, well, if I paid him, then I want my money back.” I briefly smiled, and Alec said, “So, do we just tell this guy where to go, or what?”

I’d been travelling by myself until now. I didn’t know if I could bring two people with me doing what I’d done, and I also didn’t know how much time I had left. I didn’t want to accidentally leave him behind, but I also didn’t want to run out of time before I got him somewhere better. “He’ll take us to the other side . . . He just works the fifth circle . . . um, give me your hand. I’m going to try and wish us somewhere else.”

“What?”

“How do you think I got here if I couldn’t see? I started on the other side of the Styx from Hell.”

“You can really make yourself go anywhere you want in here?”

“Uh, yeah, but it’s all thanks to you, so – “

“You don’t have to give me credit for you figuring this place out. You know it’s not true, and I’m not the type that needs to hear it or wants it . . . If I’m being honest, what I really want is to know how you’re here.”

“I’m dead.”

“But with the exception of your eyes, you’re the same. You don’t look like you’ve aged at all. How long have I been here?”

“A couple days.”

“What?”

“Feels longer?”

“Like an eternity, and that’s not what I meant . . . My Dad – “

“Is dead too.”

“How – “

“I killed him.”

“You did it?” He sounded irritated. 

“The future didn’t show you that?”

“No, the future showed me you dying in a lot of different ways . . . almost everything you do has a future where you could, but it didn’t show you killing him. Tell me you didn’t – “

“I didn’t kill myself, and I didn’t murder Elena. I separated him from Elena and I, and that killed him, but Elena and I were still attached, and she must’ve died, because I was complaining about something and then dying in the next breath. That is how I’m here, but if what you’re really asking is if I’m here for you, then yeah, I was always going to find a way to come get you. I wasn’t going to destroy the talisman and you right along with it.”

“You actually found a witch that could do that?”

“A coven and Imelda offered to do it too.”

“So, you’re saying you could’ve done that and not come here at all?” My shoulders slumped, and I bit the inside of my cheek, while I decided on how I should answer that. “Eve?”

“It’s not just you, okay, so whatever guilt you’re heaping on yourself, stop . . . It’s everyone else too, all the innocent people this thing has killed over the years. I wasn’t going to just throw you all away.”

“Okay.”

Okay? “Really?”

“I’m not going to give you a hard time for having a big heart, Eve . . . It might be like a walk in the park for you, but I don’t know any words to describe you walking into Hell to find me. Nobody has ever done something even half that nice for me, and when they did, it was still you buying me stuff to help me start a new life.”

“Nice?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, well, like I said I don’t know any words to describe it.”

“Yeah, no I’m good with nice. I’ve never been called nice . . . Well, Damon said I was once when he was trying to sell me to Caroline, but I’ll still take it.”

“You’re a lot more than that. Deserve more than you’ve ever been given.”

“So do you, but maybe because we weren’t given those things, it made us who we are.”

“Yeah . . . maybe. You really think you can get everyone out, and not just me?”

“At this point, I’d settle for just you, but yeah.”

“How?”

“I’m working on it. Whatever I come up with though, I need you to trust me.”

“I got no problems with that.” There was a brief pause, and then he finally asked something that had to have been bothering him. “I’ve gotta know . . . my Dad. Was it quick?”

Not quick enough if you asked me. “He didn’t suffer.”

“What’d you think?”

My head cocked to the side, while I considered it. “I yelled at him . . . I don’t think he liked me much. He said he’d be waiting for me when I got here. Haven’t run into him yet.”

“You really think he’s here?”

“He told me that the deal you make with the die takes priority over anything that happens to you after you make the deal, and he seemed pretty sure of it.”

“Eve.” It seemed like he had more than that, something he was struggling to say. “Look, I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but – “

“He’s your Dad, and you want to find him?”

“Can we?”

“Did you miss the part where I said he’d be waiting for me when I got here?”

“I won’t let him do anything to you . . . I just want to see him.”

“Can’t you just wait until I bring this whole thing down and let everyone go? Then you can meet up with him wherever souls go when they’re in a happy place.”

“Who says I want to see him in my happy place? I’ve just got some things I need to say to him. It's just something I have to do . . . I heard what you said when I was under the water. I wound up where I did because I buried all that anger. I do not want to go back to a place like that again.”

I slowly nodded. “Okay . . . If he’s not here, then he might be in one of two other places. The 7th circle for violence. It’s where murderers go . . . or the 9th circle for treachery because of what he did to you.”

“How many circles are there?”

“9.”

“So, 9’s pretty bad, huh?”

“It’s the worst. It’s where Satan is in the poem, and I’d say betraying your own son would be enough to put you there if Cain killing his brother did.”

“Then let’s go there.”

“Seriously?” 

I heard him laugh. “Yeah.”

“You know if you really want to let him out too, just tell me, and – “

“I won’t know ‘til I see him, but I’m thinking not.” 

Fair enough. I never knew how I would react to things like that until I was in the moment either. “Okay.” I held my hand out in his direction and felt him take it. “I’m not sure how this will work, so don’t let go.” _Base of the well on the frozen lake, and I’m bringing Alec with me._ I focused on that thought, the way I had the other times, and this time visualized Alec going there with me. 

I suddenly felt a cold more intense than anything I’d ever experienced and heard him curse next to me. Even if he hadn’t, I knew he was still with me, because the only thing providing any warmth here was his hand. Made sense. This circle was supposed to be cold because the people here were supposed to have denied love and human warmth when they were alive. Alec hadn't done either.

He helped me to my feet, and it was windier in here than I remembered reading it was, but I remembered why when Alec yelled, “Is that?”

That’s right. It was from the Devil flapping his wings. “The die’s take on the big guy? Yeah. My guess is that it’s really the first necromancer.”

“Jesus Christ.”

I exhaled a snort. “Not quite.”

“You really think my Dad’s here?”

“The more I think about it, the more I’m sure. If he is, he’ll be in the outer ring for family betrayals.” Still not letting me go, Alec dragged me to the right, while he presumably searched the faces of the people frozen in the ice. He was fast about it. No time wasted at all. He wanted to get out of here, and even though there wasn’t any screaming here, I wondered how bad it must look. I didn’t wonder enough to grow myself a pair of eyes, but I was curious. I felt us slow, and a moment later walked into him as he stopped short. “Did you find him?”

Turning to face me, he put his free hand on my shoulder as he ducked down and said, “Yeah . . . and I’m gonna need you to stay here and wait for me. There are heads all around us. You move, and you’re gonna step on someone’s face.” Yeah, I figured that’s what I’d been tripping over on my way here. They were supposed to be frozen in the lake up to their necks. It seemed like Alec was waiting for me to agree to what he’d said. If this was something he needed to do by himself, I understood, but what if I was the only thing keeping him here? I shouldn’t just be letting him go like that. I didn’t want him to get sent back to level 5. Sensing my hesitation, he leaned towards me and yelled against the wind, “It’s gonna be all right . . . Just remind this place that you’re the one making the rules, and if this is based on that Inferno book, then remind it that you’re my guide, so I can stay with you anywhere you go.” 

And this is why I knew he’d been a great hunter in the making too. He had more street smarts than I did. That’s why he was able to use charm as a weapon, but he was also quick to connect the dots, the way I was, and he was only able to function after he left this place the first time because he could compartmentalize. He was used to working as part of a team in a way I wasn’t, so without his Dad there, he’d gotten distracted for a fraction of a second by seeing me kill Klaus’s hybrids, and that’s the only reason Stefan had been able to kill him. What a waste of talent and what an even bigger waste of a genuinely good person. If he believed that all I needed to do was tell the demon die to let him stay with me, then I believed him. _You’re not allowed to send him back. I am the Virgil to his Dante._ After thinking that a couple more times, I gave him a nod, and he reluctantly let me go. I quickly asked, “You still here?”

“Yeah . . . This won’t take long.” 

I felt his warmth recede and brought my arm up to block my face from the stinging wind. I was of half a mind to tell Satan to stop flapping his wings, but if his role had been filled by a real person, then I couldn’t boss him around. He'd have some degree of consciousness and the ability to fight against his restraints the way Alec had when he was under that water, and I did not want that three-faced freak breaking free, coming after me, and trying to gnaw on my head. I turned my attention away from him and tried focusing on Alec instead. He hadn’t gone far. I could still mostly hear him even if the wind made it a little difficult. 

“Did you know?!” Crouching down, Alec yelled, “Did you know you could’ve gotten rid of that damn talisman at any time and put a stop to all of this?!” 

A brief pause, and Alec answered himself. “Yeah, you knew . . . And I wanna believe that’s why you stole it. That you did it, so you could get rid of it before I came back and had to spend even one more second here, but I know you, and you weren’t thinkin’ about me at all.”

Getting to his feet, Alec started pacing, and as the wind rose, his voice battled with it, “Just like you weren’t thinkin’ about me the day you found out it was mine . . . Sometimes you'd go off and be gone for weeks at a time . . . my guess is you knew you'd die, but you'd pawn it before you left, so you could come back - only I didn't know that. All I knew was that you kept having to pawn it. I didn't have money. I was like 14, but I'd gotten pretty good at robbing, because the money always ran out, and I figured that with the pawnshop closed for the owner's funeral, I could get in and out without anyone knowing. I gave it back to you for your birthday. You opened it and kicked my ass."

I'd mostly been trying to pretend like I couldn't hear him until then, but that one made it a little hard. I was sorely tempted to turn my head in his direction, reach out for him, something to give him some kind of comfort, but forced myself not to do it. This was between he and his Dad. I needed to be like a fly on the wall.

"And you didn't do it because you knew how much I'd fucked up. You didn’t give a shit that it meant I’d be coming here. You were pissed that I took your get out of jail free card. A real father would've done anything to get rid of it then and there, but not you . . . You got me a pack of ice and said that you always meant to give it me some day. Told me it was some family heirloom, and I got my hands on it before you could give it to me the way you wanted . . . ruined your surprise, and I wanted to believe that . . . I needed to believe you meant it, but deep down, I knew you didn’t. You let me keep it, because as long as I had it, you knew where it was and could get it back again, so I stayed alive as long as I did out of spite, and if I'd known there really was a way to get rid of it, I would've done it . . . Just like you thought Eve would. You took it from her to keep her from being able to get out of this after it became hers, because you think this is where she belongs. To you, she’s a sympathizer . . . a traitor to her own kind . . . Well, look at where you are now.” 

He stopped in front of his Dad, and knelt down again as snarled, “You should be here just for taking Katie from me.” A hesitation, and he sounded more controlled as he said, “I hated you for that . . . I fought against feeling that for you since the first time you took me on a hunt . . . Do you remember that? I wasn’t big enough to hold the crossbow straight, and you kept telling me to pull the trigger, but all I saw was a woman you tied up and wanted me to kill . . . I couldn’t do it. I tried to let her go, but you put a stake in my hand, dragged me over to her, and made me kill her. Then you taught me a lesson about not doing what you said . . . broke my nose and cracked some of my ribs . . . came close to breaking my arm, except you wanted me to be able to use it the next time you found another vampire . . . I wanted to hate you then, but I talked myself out of it . . . told myself you did it for me . . . that vampires were the problem, not you . . . not my Dad . . . and I listened to you after that . . . let you use me the same way, like a weapon, in hunt after hunt to kill them . . . until Katie.”

A particularly strong gust of wind nearly knocked me off my feet, and I fought to stay upright. I heard Alec cry out in frustration and knew he was being affected by it too. _Give him a coat. Give him a coat. Give him a coat._ Ten seconds later, Alec turned his focus back on his father. “You see that . . . Do you see how she’s lookin’ out for me? That should’ve been you. She’s a kid, and she’s done that more for me than you ever did. I don’t know why, but she sees somethin’ in me . . . Katie did too.” 

So much for being a fly on the wall . . . well, if he was okay with it, then I wouldn't be too hard on myself. The wind died down again, and sounding muffled, as I presume he bowed his head, it wasn’t hard to hear Alec as he said, “Been living the night you killed her on repeat since I got here.”

Yeah, he would’ve wanted to see the future more than relive that. His voice sounded a little clearer as he lifted his head to look at his Dad. “Turned my back on her for one second, so I could get her some blood out of my kit . . . She didn’t even know what happened. I just wanted her to have a choice, but you were never gonna let that happen . . . I heard the blade, felt the blood spray . . . I was so close that her head bounced off my shoulder on its way to the ground, and I knew what it was . . . couldn’t make myself look, but I knew . . . And it’s a hell of a lot harder to get a head off going back to front, so I know you did it that way on purpose. You wanted me to be wearing as much of her as possible to teach me another lesson . . . Couldn’t even bury her, because you threw kerosene on her as soon as I stood up and then you lit the match . . . no amount of trying to talk myself out of it was ever gonna make me stop hating you after that . . . but I stayed. Where else did I have to go? All it took was another year, almost two, and you’re the one who got turned."

He took a few moments, and sounded the closest to calm that he'd been since he started as he said, "I’ve been tryin’ to work out if I let it happen . . . I saw it coming and tried to stop it, but maybe I didn’t try as hard as I could have . . . maybe it happened too fast for a human to stop . . . I mean, I got him after he killed you, but maybe there was a part of me that wanted to see what you would do when it was your choice to make . . . and then I think that maybe that’s just the guilt talking, because I couldn't stop it. I may have hated you, but you were all I had, and then after, you had me put you down . . . It didn’t make me feel any relief. I had to kill my own Dad, and I hated you for that too, but you should’ve stayed dead. You would’ve stolen Jeremy’s life too, the way you did mine, and I was never going to let that happen, but I think you knew that. You were always sayin’ it when I was growin’ up, ‘I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it.’ A lot of people just think that’s a saying, but you actually meant it, didn’t you?”

He sounded tired, like he’d purged himself of at least a few things he’d needed to get out. I did not expect him to say anything else. “I’m not you, Dad . . . never have been. It might’ve been what kept you going, but I can’t keep holding onto all of this hate, so I want you to know that forgive you . . . and now we’re done. If there is some kind of peace to be found, then you won’t be there when I find it.”

He went quiet after that, and I finally turned my head in his direction. “How’s he look?”

“Too cold to come back with how much of a weak waste of space he thinks I am, but he sure would like to take a swing at me right about now.”

“Yeah, well I’d like to kick him in the head, but I’d rather get you away from him. Are you good with leaving him here until we destroy this thing?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“What if we don’t win? I’m new at this, but is it really forgiveness if I leave him here to rot?”

“I don’t think there’s anything that says that it’s a good idea to forgive someone and then turn around and let them stab you in the back.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s an entire saying that says that’s what you’re supposed to do. Something about turning the other cheek?”

There was a saying to that effect, wasn’t there. “You’re messing with me right now, aren’t you.”

“Little bit . . . Here. Didn’t even cross your mind to give yourself one, did it?” 

I felt him put what felt like a big parka on my shoulders, and said, “Keep it.”

“If you’re worried about it, wish me another one. You’re turning blue . . . now, how do we get out of here?”

“Well, I was thinking we should work our way up. Paradise might be interesting.”

“You’ve got a plan though, right?”

“I do. Might as well explore while here.”

“So, now you’re just killing time?” Was it so wrong to want to spend a little more time with him if this was the last I was ever going to see of him? I nodded. “Then let’s get out of here.” I felt some heat return to my body as he grabbed my hand. “Why do you feel like a campfire?”

“It happens when you’re close to me too?”

“Yeah, what does it mean?”

“It’s cold here, because these people turned their backs on human warmth . . . guess despite everything, we haven’t.”

“I could see that . . . and as fascinating as it is, I really just want to be anywhere else right about now, so tell me where to go.”

I was suddenly a little less sure about this plan. Dante lost Virgil on his way to Purgatory. Maybe I could circumvent that, and if there was a Paradise here, just go straight there. “I’m thinking I should take us there . . . unless you feel like getting up close and personal with the Devil. The portal to Purgatory is in his lap, and I for one do not plan on going there.”

“Hey, Eve – “

“Dante was a pervert. Let’s leave it at that.”

I heard him laugh. “Good to know, but I was actually gonna ask you why you think there might be two of you here.”

What? Before I could ask, there was the sound of ice breaking in the walls, and a tremble under our feet. The icy lake shook just enough to set us both off balance, and then it stopped. “What the hell was that?”

Looking around us, Alec murmured, “I was gonna ask you.” 

“Is she coming this way, or – “

“She’s not moving. She’s lying down in the middle of the lake.”

“With Satan?!”

“Not far from him, but I don’t think he sees her.”

Maybe the devil here wasn’t a real person. Maybe the first necromancer had just gone and made himself God. If that was the case, then this fake devil could stop flapping his damn wings. The wind subsided even more, and I asked, “She wasn’t there earlier?”

“No . . . what’s she doing there, Eve?” If I died under normal circumstances, then the ring kept my body in stasis until my soul could find it again, but with me stuck in here, I wouldn’t be able to find it, so my ring and the die had mixed together their magic to bring a representation of my body here. That has to be how Alec’s Dad got out with Jeremy. “She’s your ride out of here, isn’t she?”

As soon as he said it, the earth quaked again, and this time, it kept going. The cracks in the walls split further, and what I could only imagine were chunks of ice above us sounded like they were crashing into the lake. Letting go of my hand, Alec put his hands on my shoulders, and bent down to my height. “Eve, it’s okay! Go home – “

There was a ripple in the ice that swiped us off our feet, and as we crashed down, I shouted, “It’s not me!” Because I didn’t think it was. I didn’t think it was Alec either. I think it was both of us in a way, because as soon as we saw that there was a way out, we both thought the same thing, that the other one should take it, and this was the die’s way of trying to stop us, but all it was doing was making us want to save the other one more. I worried that it might think it’d made a mistake in letting us stay together and take him back to where he’d been. My hand shot out in his direction to see if he was still there. “Alec?!”

He grabbed my hand and scrambled over to me, like he was trying to shield my body with is, and I think that’s when I knew what had to be done. He was already primed for it because of the type of person he was. If I sacrificed myself for Alec, it’d be genuine, but I didn’t know if it’d be enough. His Dad had said you can’t game the game. Just the fact that I knew a sacrifice had to be made meant that me making one would give me something in return even if I was doing it to save Alec, and that would keep it from being a true sacrifice. If I sacrificed myself for all these people that I didn’t know, then I’d be doing it because it was the right thing to do, but I’d also be doing it in an attempt to get some kind of redemption for things I should’ve never let happen. That didn’t make it a true sacrifice either, and I was not willing to chance his future when it came to something this big.

For a true check mate, Alec would have to sacrifice himself, thinking he would get absolutely nothing in return, and I would have to let him. As soon as I thought it, I hated myself, and that’s what told me that it was the real sacrifice I had to make. Choking back a very sob, I yelled, “I’m so sorry, Alec.”

“Hey, it’s okay. Just knowing you’re out is – “

I had to play my part, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was so dishonest and mean, but I had to give him a viable option on a way out of here, or he wouldn’t be sacrificing anything. “No, I’m not leaving you here . . . I’m sorry you’re gonna have to learn what it’s like to be a girl.”

“Why the hell would . . . No!”

“But it’s all I’ve got right now, and how do you think your Dad came back? He hitched a ride in Jeremy’s body. Take mine. I don’t think the talisman is going to let both of us go this time. Maybe it’s different when one of us is the game master.”

“I’m not taking your body and leaving you here.”

“You wanna try time sharing?”

“This isn’t funny. Get back in your body right now.”

“No, I’m serious . . . we could make a run for it, and – “

“I’m not taking half your life away from you just so I can get out of here.” 

Wrapping an arm around my waist, he got me to my feet, yelling, “Let’s go,” and it reminded me of the time he tried to boss me around when he was worried about me bleeding into my chest cavity. I went about 3 feet before tripping over a head, and the next thing I knew, he’d picked me up and was running me across the lake. He’d passed the test as far as I was concerned, and the second he got me to my body, that meant he would have committed to it, and this should all be over, but just the fact that he hadn’t even had to think about putting me first, made me change my mind. I couldn’t do that to him. 

He might be saving himself without knowing it, but it was also me using him to do it, the way his father had used him his whole life. It’s how my parents had used me my whole life. He was worth more than that. He wasn’t a lamb I could lead to slaughter. I would find another way. “Alec, stop! I can’t let you do this.”

“Love to see you try and stop me right now.”

_Put me back on the other side of the lake, and leave him the coat._

I went from being carried to falling onto the ice wherever we’d been when we started and heard him yell, “Eve . . . What are you doing?!” I didn’t know. Prolonging the inevitable? Trying to figure out another way? I had no idea where I was going, but I started running to buy myself more time and just straight up stomped on some peoples’ faces before I was eventually brought down by one. Landing hard, I smacked my head off the ice and heard him come up behind me. “You ready to see sense now?”

I grumbled, “No,” and was about to wish myself into the ice when he said, “Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t.”

“Or what?”

“Or nothing. Just don’t.” As I got to my hands and knees, he put his hand on my shoulder and got an arm under my legs to pick me up again before saying, “My time is done, Eve. Yours isn’t.”

“Yes it is, or I wouldn’t be here right now.”

“It isn’t really, and we both know it. I’m not gonna let you throw that away . . . you ready?”

For what? For him to run me over this lake? The shaking hadn’t stopped. It’d just taken a couple of hunters, who were used to being light on their feet, a little bit of time to get used to it and think nothing of it. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.” _Just tell him that a sacrifice is all it takes to make this place go away . . . but if I do that, then he won’t find peace. This is the only way, and you know it. Play your damn part._ “It’s not right.”

“What isn’t right is you being here at all, so get ready.” From some of the jumps he had to make on the way back, it would appear that I’d been lucky not to just run into a crevice and fallen however far they went, not that I could die here. I was already dead. So was he. Even if this worked the way I hoped, I wouldn’t be happy about it. Elena was right. I’d settle for him finding peace, but what I really wanted was for him not to have died at all, and I wasn’t ready to let him go. When he slowed to a walk, he finally said, “And when you get out, I want you to do whatever it takes to destroy that talisman.”

_That damn die better go up in smoke and let everyone out of here the second he puts me back in my body, or I will be coming back until I get this right._ “Why do people make deathbed promises that are so hard to keep?”

“Well, if it helps, I died a few days ago, so that makes this one bigger, and you basically have to do it.” 

“That’s lousy.” 

“I’m not tryin’ to play nice, Eve. I’m trying to get you back home before you do something, like wish yourself under the ice, and I don’t want you coming back here again.” 

“How’d you know I was thinking of going under the ice?” 

I felt him sigh. “No way you’re actually going to go to a circle I’m not if you think it’s gonna send me back.” Wrapping my arms around his shoulders in something of a hug, I buried my head in his neck and shook my head. “And there’s not many other places you could go here to get away from me, especially if you can't see . . . remember that. I did this, not you.” 

Was he trying to minimize my guilt for leaving him here now? “Alec?” 

“What?” 

“I can’t pretend that’s true. I can find - “ I was rudely interrupted as he lurched forward and took a tumble. I spilled out onto the ice. Had he lost his footing? That’s what I’d thought at first, but then I was being picked up by the scruff of my neck, and a voice I didn’t know said, “You think this traitor is better than me?” 

Pulling out one of my stakes, I retorted, “I have no idea who you are,” and heard Alec yell, “No!” a second before I was flung to the side. I heard somebody get tackled and waited to land, so I could get back up, but I didn’t land. I just kept falling, and eventually I knew why. Whoever that’d been had just thrown me into a never ending void that’d opened up in the ice, and the only thing I cared about was falling so far that I would lose whatever connection I had to Alec that was keeping him out of his Hell. “Enough!!” I stopped falling, so I guess I was right about being able to fly in here if I wanted to do it. “Take me back!” I went from hovering in mid-air to moving in the opposite direction as fast as I’d been falling. 

The rules of this place were set by me, but his place was not giving up without a fight. It seemed almost like it had some kind of artificial intelligence that allowed it to keep learning and changing its strategy. If it now knew that if it couldn’t use its minions against us, because I’d ultimately find a way to make it pull them back, then it had to also know what I’d figured out, which was that I couldn’t control other real people. That meant it could use them against us, but it didn’t communicate that to anyone. All it had to do was let the right person out of prison, and there’s really only one who would not only want to get involved because of a personal vendetta, but who would also do what had to be done to keep any sacrifices from being made today. It was Alec’s Dad, and he wanted another chance, but this time, he wanted to use my body as a vessel, and every vampire I was close to out there would be put at risk if he got his way. 

Not only that, but I also didn’t have any idea what he could or would do to Alec in the time he had left with him. He’d hurt Alec enough for ten lifetimes, and I didn’t want him to do it for even one second more. The sound changed as I broke even with the surface, and I landed on my feet. The shaking had stopped, and that couldn’t be good. The demon die thought it was going to win. 

“Not so tough now, boy, huh?” 

If I hadn’t heard Alec grunt and then choke out, “You can’t do this,” then the way his Dad had called him ‘boy,’ the same ‘boy,’ that Klaus’ father had used, would’ve been enough to piss me off, but I had heard the rest, and I shut all my emotions down. I didn’t know what he was doing to his son, choking him out, using a shard of ice to impale him to the ice, putting a boot to his neck, any of the above or worse could be happening, and it wasn’t because Alec was a worse fighter or weak. He loved his Dad as much as he hated him, so he was never going to be able to annihilate that man, but his father meant nothing to me. 

My stake hadn’t left my hand, and I gripped it tight as I assumed an attacking stance. _I don’t give a shit about the future, so you can keep it, but I will make this right and get some kind of justice for Alec even if it means you’ll suck out every last memory I have. Whatever the consequences, give me back my eyes._

The next thing I knew, I was inhaling the largest gasp of air I’d had since I was born. I went to move and banged my head off of something hard. “What the hell?” 

I heard a minion exclaim, “Sweet, merciful – “ and cut it off. “Alec?” 

“Looks like we got another one.” 

Ignoring the second minion, I yelled, “Alec?!” 

“I warned you this might happen and that if it did, it’d be because of her ring. She’s not a vampire.” 

My head turned in the direction of that voice. Elena? 


	4. Don't Forget

What the hell was going on around here? I’d said to give me back my eyes. My hands went to my face and where my eyes were supposed to be. I felt a bandage and quickly snatched it off my head. Going back to my face, I patted around what sure felt like eyes, but why was everything still so dark? 

Where was the ice? Where was Alec? Was this the future, because I said I didn’t want see it. No, it couldn’t be that. Elena was dead. 

Alec said you had no choice in what you saw once you opened your eyes, but if this wasn’t the future, then what the hell was it? Whatever simulation the demon die was making me see, I hadn’t meant for it to start before I had a chance to rip Alec’s father apart and go check on Alec. “Take me back to Alec.” Nothing happened. “I said take me back!”

“She doesn’t know what’s happening right now. I need to go check on her.” 

There she was again. “Elena?” 

“I’m here, Eve.”

“Where is here? What’s it look like? And where is Alec?”

“Um . . . Eve, Alec died.”

“Yeah, no shit. Why the hell isn’t he here instead of you, and why are you in my Hell? And why are you talking back to me, like you're real? Fuckin' evolving AI bullshit supernatural program. You think you can distract me? Well, you can't. You won't win. I won't let you." 

“I . . . don’t . . . have any good answers right now. The important thing you need to know is that the Council knows everything, and – “

“The Council? I don’t care about those morons. They’re hardly Hell material. I’d really much rather be in the 9th circle with Satan unless the entire point is torture by boredom. . . wait is that what’s going on? Well, if it is, you can do better than that demon die, so if you wouldn’t mind sending me back in the meantime, that’d be swell.”

Minion one asked, “What did she just say?”

Elena’s voice quickly answered, “She, um . . . It’s really hard to hear her through the seat, Pastor Young, but whatever it was, I know she’s just really confused right now. If we pulled over, so I could check on her, then I’m sure I could get her to calm down.”

“Calm down? I don’t know who you’re talking about sister, but I am calm . . . for the most part, or I was. Now, I’m starting to get pissed off with all this nonsense.” I was also starting to feel sick, which didn't help my mood.

Random minion number 1 responded before she could. “That sounded clear enough to me. We’re almost there. We’ll let her out when we stop.”

Turning away from me, Elena rushed out, “I have to be the one to let her out.” She was on the other side of a barrier to my right. When I touched it, it didn’t seem too terribly sturdy. There was a carpeted feel to it. We appeared to be moving. Was I stuck in the trunk of a car?

I heard random stranger number 1 say, “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” and I took another look at my surroundings. I was almost positive this was a trunk. Why would I be in one? And why was Elena here? Why had Alec been stuck in a quietly wrathful loop of the moment his girlfriend was killed? Maybe this was happening because I didn’t do everything I should’ve done to keep Elena safe. I hadn’t really let myself contemplate that much since I’d been here, and maybe I was being confronted with it now. 

Did I have to learn some kind of lesson on that before I could go back? If I did, then I couldn’t let myself get sucked in by it too much, or it’d not only keep me from stopping Alec’s Dad from stealing my body, but it’d also keep me from kicking his ass and making sure Alec was okay, and it’d strip me of all my memories and replace them with whatever this snooze fest was. I rolled away from the voices to see if there was anything back here I could use to start this mission, so I could get it over with as quickly as possible, and heard Elena say, “She’s my sister. You can’t keep her from me.”

“I’m sorry it’s come to this, but to keep you safe – “

“Safe, from my sister?”

“I’m afraid she’s not your sister anymore.”

“Yes, she is!” Elena took a beat, and I assume tried to keep her anger from getting the better of her, because she came back sounding a lot calmer. “Look, despite what you think, she is my sister, but you have to give me a chance to show you that she is. All she’s ever tried to do is protect me, and confused or not, I know she’d never hurt me. That’s why you need to let me be the one to let her out. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. She’s dangerous at the best of times, and right now, she is waking up from something pretty traumatic.“ Somebody snorted, and it set Elena off. “Do you think I’m joking? The longer she’s back there alone, the more she’s probably – “

I stopped trying to unscrew the compartment that surely had to hold a lug nut wrench and yelled, “Hey! Stop talking me up. It’s not doing me any favors,” to make her shut up, and waited for some kind of response. When I didn’t get one, I went back to my task sure that I’d been right about the demon die trying to mess with my head about Elena. One, what she’d just said made me feel pretty guilty, because I hadn’t done nearly enough to keep her safe that last day. I’d severed the link between her and Alec’s Dad, but I hadn’t been with her to protect her in person. Two, Elena would never be all ‘my sister is going to kick your ass.’ Three, my real sister would’ve never known me well enough to know I was back here trying to get a weapon, because I couldn’t find any on me. Apparently, in this hellscape, I had to start with nothing and work my way up.

Starting to feel less sick, I finally got the screw out that was holding the compartment closed. I’d been quiet in getting the cover over the compartment up. Opening the compartment itself might be a little louder. I could always leave it. They’d be waiting for me to do something when they opened the trunk thanks to her, and they had the better ground with me being stuck in here. If I immediately went on the attack, I’d wind up losing . . . Okay, I'd get the tire iron and bide my time until I could use it. I just didn’t feel comfortable going into anything unarmed. 

To cover the sound of me opening the compartment to the spare tire, I decided to stage an argument with Elena. “You’re not a very good sidekick.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Do I really have to elaborate?”

“And why am I the sidekick?”

I found something metallic and let my fingers trail along it. It wasn't one of those cross ones, so that was promising when it came to hiding it. One tip was what you’d expect, heavy head where the lug nuts are supposed to go. Good for bludgeoning. The other end was a bit tapered . . . not sharp per se, but it’d do in a pinch for stabbing. I wrapped my hand around the tire iron and said, “Because this is my Hell, and you’re the one who crashed it.”

“Will you stop saying you’re in Hell?”

Stuffing the tire iron up my sleeve, I absentmindedly answered, “Need to keep reminding myself, so I don’t forget.”

“Forget what?”

I put the lid back down and started screwing it back in as I said, “That this isn’t real, so when I find my way back to Kronos, I can get him away from Alec, help Alec find peace, and go home.”

“Eve, I don’t know what you’ve been through or where you’ve been, but this is real.”

That’s exactly what the die would want me think. “I wasn’t near my body. I didn’t just get pulled into it and come back.”

“Didn’t you say that you could free the souls if there was a sacrifice? Maybe that’s what happened.”

“I didn’t sacrifice anything.” _Maybe Alec did._ I didn’t know where I’d gotten that thought. It just popped in there, and I stopped to look around me with a fresh set of eyes. Had he? I shook my head and got back to trying to make this trunk look the way it should. Elena was dead. This wasn’t real. I couldn’t afford to even start to think it was. 

What I needed to do was get the cover over the spare tire compartment back down before we stopped and without anyone hearing me do it. “So I take it Random Stranger number 1 is supposed to be Pastor Young . . . that guy was absolutely useless in the meetings, came in chatting to everyone, like it was some kind of church social event, loved the cakes, and provided absolutely no real solutions to anything. In short, he’s a waste of my time . . . who is Random Stranger number 2?”

“Umm . . . You know they can hear you, right?“

That was the plan. If my insults caught their attention, then they’d listen to those and not anything else I was doing. With the cover back in place, I smoothed out the blanket that was on top of it and rolled onto my back. “Since when has that ever stopped me?”

“You’re right. I can honestly say that for as long as I’ve known you, you have never known when to keep your mouth shut.” I found myself snorting at that, and she leaned towards the back seat as she said, “What can you remember, Eve?”

“I was in the 9th circle, and – “

“No, I mean what can you remember from before you were there.”

“The 5th circle?”

“No.” Leaning closer, she hastily whispered, “I mean before you died.”

Oh. “Everything.”

“Really?” 

“Yeah, I kept my eyes closed, so I could.”

It sounded like she was smiling when she said, “You found a way to beat it.”

“Not yet. I have to beat this level, so I can get back to where I was and finish what I was doing.”

“Okay, we’ll get to that . . . Do you remember when Damon and I came to get you in Chicago?”

“I’d say you were really there for Stefan . . . would have left me there if it’d been up to you.”

“I’ll take that as a yes . . . Do you remember when you woke up, how you thought I was your reflection, but I wasn’t? That’s just what your mind told you to make sense of what you were seeing after it got messed up by those drugs. This is the same thing. It’s over, Eve, and I am really here. I’m not a reflection or a figment of your imagination.”

“You have to be. I know I wasn’t doing anything to get myself killed when – “

“I know, and we can’t really talk about that right now.”

“I don’t want to talk about it either, but we probably should. That might be my ticket back.”

I felt us starting to slow down, as we took a turn onto a bumpy lane way, and she quickly said, “Do you really think I’m in Hell with you right now? Do you think I deserve that?”

“But you’re not really – “

“I'm not a simulation of me. I'm interacting with you. Did anyone else do that?”

“Alec, and his Dad, but they were real people.”

“And so am I! You know what I think, what I really believe? You did what you set out to do, Eve. You saved those people, and you saved Alec, but you don’t know it, because whatever you did, you don’t think it was a sacrifice. It’s just something you would do, but the thing is that you make sacrifices almost every single day, and we – I take them for granted, so you don’t think they’re important, but they are.”

_You screwed up, demon die. If that was supposed to be sentimental and touching, another kind of torture now that she's dead, then you were wrong._ “My sister would never say that to me.”

We came to a stop, and she lost her cool a bit. “I know I’ve been awful to you, and I am so sorry for that, Eve, but I need you to listen to me.” I heard car doors open and close, before she quickly said, “Eve, whatever you’re planning, don’t do it. If they kill you, you’ll stay dead. You don’t have to believe me. Just don’t attack anyone. Give your brain a few more minutes to figure this out, and I know you will. I need my sister. Do you understand me? I can’t do this without you.” I heard the keys in the trunk lid, and my attention turned in that direction. “Eve? Eve, please!”

Before I could answer, the lid came up, and even if I had planned on doing anything, I wouldn’t have been able to do more than I did, which was shield my face from the first full-dose of sunlight I’d seen in what felt like weeks.


	5. It's Okay, I've Got This

“Turn off the sun.” Nothing happened. For someone reason I was having a bad reaction to it, and my stomach was beginning to churn. 

By the time my eyes had begun to adjust to the light, Elena had made her way out of the car. Pastor Young, stopped her from getting any closer, and she yelled, “What more proof do you need? She’s not burning in the sun.”

I might not be burning on the outside, but the sun sure seemed to be burning a hole in my stomach. I ignored the Pastor saying, “The Salvatore’s don’t either. Stay back,” and started to climb out of the trunk. They might have guns on me, but they gave me the space to do it, which meant that either they wanted to make sure I was a vampire before they shot me; Elena’s words had gotten through, and nobody wanted to get close to her demented sister in the back, or they really believed I was a vampire and didn't want to get too close. Either way, I was mostly grateful that I didn’t have anyone manhandling me. 

I got one leg out, then the other, and rolled myself out onto the ground. Bad move. I really felt like I was going to be sick. I got to my hands and knees and felt water fill my mouth. _No! This isn’t real. I don’t have a stomach to make me -_ The muscles in my stomach tightened, and I lurched forward as the contents of my non-existent stomach proved themselves to be very real . . . and very black . . . and apparently there were enough of them to fill more than one stomach, because it didn't stop until they were all gone, and it went on for way too long. 

I was conscious of the fact that Elena was struggling to get to me, but I was mostly focused on . . . well, I guess you could call it vomit, but it mostly looked like slimy crude oil, and it smelled a lot like the fifth circle. Is that what I'd been swimming in there? What was it doing here? If this was real, it wouldn’t be here, would it? But if this weren’t real, then I wouldn’t have gotten sick at all. Was it a parting shot from the demon die on my way out, or something else? Was I purging myself of the evil I’d touched being in there? Could Elena be right? Could I have destroyed it, and this was a manifestation of the evil that thing had contained? I didn’t know, but it certainly wasn’t a very good moment for someone to touch me, let alone stab me in the shoulder with something.

Reaching back, I ripped the syringe out, and stuffed it in my pocket as I got to my knees. Looking up with murderous eyes at the man who’d stabbed me, I almost smirked, “You really shouldn’t have. I didn't need a weapon, but thanks.” Faster than he could back away, I thrust my fist up in a sharp jab to his solar plexus, instantly knocking the wind out of him. He made horrible gasping sounds as he doubled over and then fell onto his side. 

Elena’s shadow fell over me as she finally broke free of the Pastor, and with both arms up, she put herself between me and the others as she yelled, “You can’t shoot her! If that was vervain, it didn’t work . . . She’s not a vampire.”

Putting his hand out to try and talk her down, the Pastor took a step closer as he said, “Maybe not, but there is something wrong with her, Elena.”

 _Why the hell is he in charge? He's such a tool. I want a better opponent._ Looking over her shoulder at the man struggling to breathe, Elena shook her head before focusing back on the Pastor. “I told you she’s confused. There’s nothing wrong with her.” 

Pointing to where I’d been sick, the Pastor said, “That doesn’t look like something’s wrong to you,” and I muttered, “What, you’ve never heard of dark magic?” 

I’d said it loud enough for him to hear me. I suppose everyone had, and that’s why it’d gone quiet. Nobody knew how to react to it. They obviously hadn’t believed Elena about my ring, because they didn’t know much about even good magic. All they knew about the supernatural world was vampire-related, and Elena didn’t know how to respond to me being a smart ass . . . like ever, but especially when we were surrounded by people with guns. 

I took the moment of quiet my comment had afforded me and used the back of my sleeve to wipe off my mouth. I saw the black residue it left behind, and it was troubling, but whatever it was, it was going to have to wait. I needed to defuse this situation first. “Do you own this place?” My eyes drifted over to the Pastor, and he didn’t know what I meant. He didn’t know much of anything. Whatever he thought he knew, whatever he’d been planning by taking Elena, you could see that it was starting to come apart at the seams because of me. “Do you own it? Because if you do, and you don’t invite me into it, I’ll still be able to get in there.”

Elena hissed, “Eve, you’re not helping,” and I looked up at the back of her head. 

For the first time, I noticed that she was a little hunched at the shoulders, like she was in pain. Had one of them hurt her? “Did that come out sounding too much like a threat?”

“Yeah, a little.” 

I tried to adjust my tone as I focused back on the Pastor. “Let’s test it, and if I can’t cross the threshold, then you can have someone shoot me in the back.”

Elena looked down at me. “Seriously, just stop talking,” and I noted how pale she was. She had bags under her eyes, and she looked like she was starting to sweat. I reached out to grab her hand and noticed that any guns that’d been relaxed went right back to pointing at me, but I ignored them. If they were going to shoot me, they would’ve done it by now. She wasn’t cold, but she was too cool to have even a hint of fever . . . They were cold sweats. Injury, stress, shock - those caused cold sweats. Getting to my feet, I studied her eyes. She was worried about our current circumstances, but that didn’t explain why they looked so frenzied. 

She was trying to hold it together to help me, but she was really all over the place, not the Elena I knew at all, but still my Elena nonetheless. If this was real, then there was a way she could be here, wasn’t there, and it’s the same reason she couldn’t focus . . . how focused can you be when you’re that hungry? “How long have I been gone?”

“Almost a day.”

“Have you had anything to eat?” Her shoulders fell as she correctly assumed what I was asking. Ducking her head, she shook it and then looked back up at me to see what I thought about it. Well, if she was turning, and she hadn’t had blood because it’s what she wanted, then that was one thing, but if she hadn’t had any blood because these guys came and picked her up before she could, then that was an entirely different scenario. “Do you want anything, because I’ll make sure you get it if you do.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“Better figure it out soon.” Until then, we had some tests to pass. Taking her hand, because I wasn’t letting her get separated from me, I went around her and headed for the house saying, “So are we doing this or what?”

“Hold on now. You hurt James. You can't just walk away without us addressing that.” Sure I could. These goons had been allowed to think they were running the show for far too long.

Turning back to look at the Pastor, but still in a rush to prove that neither I or Elena were vampires, I shrugged. “Hey, he came at me first. He’s lucky that’s all I did to him.” Pointing at the other men who were standing around, either unsure of what to do or helping James to his feet, I added, “Something you’d all be wise to remember.” 

I gave the Pastor one last look in warning and turned my back on them, as we made it to the steps of the porch. Elena quickened her pace to walk beside me. Leaning into me, she whispered, “You didn’t have to be so rude.”

“I’m not going to be nice to people who are pointing guns at me.” 

“Aren’t those exactly the kind of people you should be nice to though?”

“Uh, they let us walk away, so I’d say I’m doing all right.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. A lot of that depends on you. For once, you’re the wild card.”

“I can be spontaneous, you know.”

“Sure . . . in a couple of predictable ways.”

“Eve?”

“Hm?”

“They took Stefan. I’m worried.”

She should be. “Let’s focus on us first.” Opening the door, I held it open for her and waved her on through before looking back at the Pastor and the man who were following us. Wiggling my fingers at them, I hoped over the threshold and threw them a cheeky grin. At that point, I was fairly certain that what was happening was real or would be happening in the future, but Alec said that the future he saw was in short snippets and of multiple futures. So far I was only seeing one, which lead me to believe this was real. Even if it wasn’t, then this future is what would replace my memories, but in this future, I had my memories, so either I had found a way to break the rules even more than I already had by having my memories incorporated into the future I was seeing, or it was real, and I had to act like it was. 

The first thing on my agenda was to come up with a way to get us out of here, but that all really did depend on Elena and my stomach, which was starting to feel unsettled again. I could slip some of my blood into her drink if she decided that’s what she wanted, but it’d have to wait until it was dark, and preferably not be here, because I remembered seeing Elijah’s reaction to being in a house when he hadn’t been invited into it. That wouldn’t go unnoticed by anyone around us. I also didn’t know if Elena would be able to last until it was dark or if my blood would work, because I didn’t know what the hell that black shit was or if it was tainting my blood in some way that would be detrimental to her, but there were at least a few blood bags walking around if needs be. If she didn’t want to complete the transition, then I was going to have to get her out of here and help her find Stefan, so she could have her goodbyes . . . if he was even still alive, and I couldn’t even bring myself to ask about Damon yet. I guess he was my alive and dead cat again.


	6. Out of Frying Pan Into the Fire

Well, this was going downhill fast, and we hadn’t been here long. I’d barely had enough time to rinse my mouth out in the sink and take my seat at the kitchen table next to Elena before I realized I was going to have to get her out of here sooner than anticipated. I’d been hoping to have at least 15 minutes to rest while I acclimated to my new surroundings, and I might be finding it difficult to not get sick again, but Elena was worse. She was starting to break out in a more noticeable sweat, and her eyes were getting wilder. She really needed to stop shielding them from the sun too. 

On the plus side, the Pastor seemed to think that he was okay in here on his own with us. Not that his men were far. My guess would be that they were on patrol. Sliding into the seat across from me, he asked, “What’d you mean out there . . . about dark magic?”

If his focus was on me, then he wasn’t as likely to pick up on Elena’s jitteriness. I’d like to keep it that way until my stomach settled. “None of you guys ever stopped to look beyond the Gilbert pedigree, but do you know why I’m on the Council?”

Sitting back, while he judged me from the other side of the table, the Pastor, said, “Well, I assume it has something to do with Sheriff Forbes and Mayor Lockwood helping keep your friend, Damon Salvatore’s, secret.”

He said it like he had something over me, because he knew something he shouldn’t, and I exhaled a dismissive laugh. “Stick to sermon’s, Pastor. You just don't have what it takes to be intimidating . . . No, I’m on the Council, because I’m a hunter, and I’m very good at what I do.”

“If that were true, then you wouldn’t live with two of them.”

The corner of my mouth turned up into a slight smirk. “Don’t you mean three? Or did you not meet my other roommate when you presumably raided the Boarding House?” I watched him try to hide his mistake and said, “And all that means is that I’m good enough to live with them and hold my own . . . The point being that as a hunter, I’ve come across more in my short life than you could ever possibly imagine, including a necromancer’s talisman. Necromancers use dark magic to raise the dead and find out the future, and this talisman killed people to bring the necromancer back from the dead with his own knowledge of the future, but the necromancer died a long time ago, and the talisman remained. It’s been killing people ever since, taking them to its version of Hell, and using their souls to power itself. When you found me, I was dead, because I was trying to let those souls go and destroy the talisman from inside its prison. Me getting sick outside, that was just a side effect of me being there, but I won’t know if the talisman is gone for good until I get out of here and find out if the witch I gave it to let anyone touch it.”

With a tired sigh, he sat back a little further in his seat. “It’s my understanding that if there are witches, then they are hard to come by.”

“Well, I’m not telling you the witches I know, because I don’t want you going all grand inquisitor on them, but I don’t think your understanding covers very much. There’s a whole lot more out there than you think. I mean I killed an entire werewolf pack outside of town not that long ago.”

Seeming skeptical as he got to his feet, he said, “Werewolves? I suppose now, you’re going to tell me that they’re responsible for the attacks around town.”

“Some of them, yeah.”

Again with the barely bridled disbelief, he asked, “And you killed them?”

Snapping my fingers to keep him from taking a closer look at Elena as he went to her for some kind of verification, I said, “Pay attention. I’m a hunter. Killing is what I do.”

Before he could say anything else and annoy me more, Elena asked, “Where is Stefan?”

Worst timing ever. I’d had to acknowledge that I lived with vampires when he called me out on it, so we could move on from that, but now that we had, he didn’t need to be reminded that we were sympathizers again. I was trying to convince him to let us go by focusing on the talisman. If I sold it as more evil than vampires, then he might let us go, so I could make sure it was really gone. It was a long shot, but he was a Pastor, so he had to believe in the concepts of good and evil and souls and afterlives, or he wouldn’t have taken the job, and I wanted to give the peaceful option a chance before I went with the bloody one. She’d just made that first option a whole lot harder to reach. “Where he can’t hurt you.” She opened her mouth to refute that as he turned away from us, but I reached across the table to grab her hand and made her stop. “Are you two hungry?”

I answered for myself anyway. “God, no. What part of me puking up Hell juices did you miss?” 

He chuckled and shook his head as he pulled something out of the fridge. “I can tell John raised you anyway. He always thought he was the smartest one in the room and took things right to the line of what was acceptable. Upset a lot of people in this town, but he had a certain charm to him too, one that won a lot of folks over. Your charm needs work, Miss Gilbert.”

“I don’t know. I’ve had some pretty sophisticated people say that I can be charming when I want to be. I reckon it’s more that I’m an acquired taste.”

“She is the smartest one in the room.” I looked at Elena, ready to chastise her for interrupting again, and she said, “You are. Stop pretending you’re not and do something.” Was this it? Was she letting me know what she'd decided about being a vampire? “You need to help, Stefan.” 

Nope. She was just obsessing over Stefan. Pulling on her hand to tug her closer to me, I harshly whispered, “Stop bringing him up.” It was only setting us back.

“But – “

“He’s alive all right? The man said that he’s where he can’t hurt you, not that he’s dead.”

“But for how long, Eve? You need to do something, and you need to do it now.”

Butting-in as he brought Elena a plate, Pastor Young said, “I’m afraid that we can’t let you leave yet. We need . . . ”

Shutting him out, I watched Elena. She was about to flip out, wasn’t she? The thought of Stefan was the only thing keeping her from doing it. “You really are the worst sidekick.”

The second her plate touched the table, I snatched the steak knife on it, grabbed his wrist to hold him down, and slammed the knife through his hand up to the handle. Elena jumped up in shock, knocking her chair over in the process. Knowing that I’d pinned him to the table, but only for as long as it took him to pull that out, I ignored his screams, grabbed Elena by the shoulders, and turned her towards the door. She couldn’t feed here. “Elena, go!”

I got her through the door, and she pushed back against me. “What did you do?”

Giving her a shove, I spat out, “What you told me to do . . . now get moving.”

“What about Stefan?”

“I will come back and find him, but I have to get you out of here first.”

“I’m not leaving without him.”

Deciding that she wasn’t moving, less because she was fighting me on it, and more because she was having trouble doing it, I grabbed her by the hand and started running for cover. “They need him alive. He’ll be okay.” 

I stopped when I heard footsteps behind us and shoved her in front of me as I dropped the tire iron from my sleeve. “Keep running!” Flipping the tire iron around, I grabbed the pointy end, planted my back foot for more power as I pivoted, and swung the blunt end of my weapon into the side of a man’s head before he could grab me. It knocked him out, and I bent over him to see if he had anything I could use. I didn’t want his shotgun, but his handgun might come in handy. I took it, and on a whim, looked down at his face. It made me pause.

I’d seen enough blank stares to know, but my hand still went to his neck as I checked his pulse. Oh come on, I hadn’t actually killed him, had I? Dropping to my knees, I held my breath as I tried to find his pulse again, and heard Elena garble, “Get away from me.” Without thinking, I levelled the gun in her direction, saw a guy in profile going to hit her with the butt of his rifle and shot him in the upper left quadrant of his side.

He might make it if he made it to a hospital, but in all honesty, that would still be a long shot, and it wasn’t my first concern. I knew what she was going to do probably before even she did. “Elena, move away from him!” If she fed out here, she’d burn up in the sun, and what did she do? She crouched down next to him. “Elena, no!” Maybe she’d made her choice. Maybe she hadn’t, but either way, she wasn’t listening to me. Getting to my feet, I flipped the safety back on the handgun, and ran in her direction as I tucked it into the back of my waistband. By the time she’d dipped her fingers into his blood and brought them to her lips, I’d taken off my jacket and flung it over her head. Lifting up under her arms to get her to her feet, I wrapped an arm around her waist as she started to scream and ran us in the direction of the nearest building I could see that wasn’t the house. 

Barrelling through the door of the barn, I threw her on the ground and slammed the door shut behind me to keep the sun out. Leaning back against the door, I watched her blistered hands start to wriggle my jacket off her head and tried to steady my heart. “Elena, if you ever do that to me again, I’ll kick your fucking ass, and now I can without feeling too bad about it.”

“Elena?!” Her head snapped in Stefan’s direction, and she started crawling over to him. There weren’t any people with guns, who were trying to kill us in here, so she should be fine if I left her. Stepping away from the door, I went back out to check on the guy I’d shot, but he was dead by the time I got to him. It wasn’t until I got to the guy I’d struck in the head and still didn’t find a pulse that what I’d done really started to hit me. _You can take me back any time now, demon die._ No reprieve came. 

I tried to revive them. Not sure how long I did, but I did try, and the longer I did, the more ill I felt until I had to go back to the barn or face getting sick again. Walking through the door, I noticed that Stefan was out of his cage. Considering he was out, I wasn’t expecting to see anyone in the cage across from where he’d been. “Two for the price of one, and neither of you could just stay dead.”

So Rebekah had been involved in our deaths. Guess I called that one too. “Well, hello, to you too. At least you’re back to insulting me, so I guess that’s an improvement.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion. “What?”

“Since I shot you?” Pausing as I looked off to the side, I said, “You know, it feels like years since that happened, but I’ve been told you can hold a grudge, so . . . I was sort of thinking we could call it even. I killed you momentarily. You killed me momentarily. If I let you out of here, then we’re good, right?”

She came to the bars. “You would really do that?”

I was adept at starting over with people when I felt like we were on even footing. “Sure.”

“Why?”

One less thing to weigh me down. “Right now, you’re no worse than me, and I’m no better than you. If there were ever a time where it was going to be possible, this is it.”

Standing a little taller, she appraised me, “And if I say we’re not even?”

“I don’t care . . . To me we are. What you do with that is up to you.” 

I really wasn’t setting her up for some big fall, and her getting out of here wasn’t predicated on whether or not she agreed with what I’d said. She watched her brother die last night. She should’ve been let go at the same time Stefan was. White knuckling the tire iron I must’ve picked up when I went back to the guy I’d killed with it, I stepped forward and proceeded to batter the lock on her cage until I got it and then some. Watching me warily when I stopped and carelessly cast the murder weapon away from me, she opened the door. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I don’t think I am . . . but thanks for asking. You should probably go. Nobody on the farm will give you any trouble. The rest must be in town, but they won’t be there forever.” 

Giving me a hesitant nod, she was there and gone in a flash, and Stefan finally spoke to me, but what really had my attention was the fan above Rebekah’s cage. Was that a whole bundle of vervain in front of it? What a waste. Pulling the gun from my waistband, I flicked the safety off and aimed it at the fan motor. I killed it in one and went into the cell to see if I could reach the vervain. That stuff wasn’t easy to find. Scaling the chain link fence, I got high enough to grab the bundle and dropped it to the ground. When I got down, I stomped out the flames and went looking for more, because if these people had more, they didn’t deserve it. I found a bunch of it at the back of the barn. What were they planning to do, burn it all? You concentrate it down and use a whole lot less when you evaporate it into a fog instead of using smoke. I was on my way out of the tackle room when Stefan showed up in front of me. “Hey . . . been kind of a rough day, huh?”

Hugging the vervain bundle to my chest, I shook my head. “You have no idea.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

He didn’t want to talk about just anything. He wanted me to talk about the two dead bodies outside, because he was a people killing expert. “No offense, Stefan, but who I want right now isn’t you. It’s your brother.”

His eyebrows arched, and then the corner of his mouth lifted into a lopsided grin “I’m sure he’d be happy to hear that, but we’re going to be here until it’s dark, so we might as well talk about something.”

“Got any good bedtime stories? I’m tired.” 

He chuckled and then nodded in my direction as he tried again. “Elena said you’re sick?”

“I don’t feel sick right now.”

“Are you sure? You’re looking a little pale.”

“Shouldn’t you be talking Elena through being a vampire or something?”

“Maybe.” Leaning forward, he whispered, “Or maybe I’m not ready to do that yet.”

Oh. So, he was using me as a distraction, or at least he wanted me to think he was. “Am I really pale?” He nodded. “I feel fine in here though . . . I think the sun brings it on more.”

“It wouldn’t hurt to have Imelda check you out when we leave.”

I just wanted to go home. “Where is she?”

“She and Alice must’ve slipped out the back when the deputies came for us at Elena’s.”

“They left together?” 

“As far as I know.”

“I’m actually not as surprised by that as I should be . . . Nobody touched the die?” 

“I think Alice may have convinced Imelda to let her have it, so no human could touch it, and it was a lot harder to resist than Imelda thought it was going to be, so she agreed.”

And now for the question I really wanted to ask. “Where was Damon through all of this?”

Taking a deep breath, Stefan considered his words carefully. “Damon was . . . being Damon.”

“So, generally awesome?”

He laughed again and loosened up a bit. “You know what? You probably would’ve thought he was . . . Nobody else did, but you seem to get my brother in a way nobody else does. He and Alice took you to Imelda. I’m not even sure he knew what he wanted her to do, just something, anything? And the longer it went on, the more he hounded her for the talisman, but he had to do all of it from outside, because even after she let Alice in with your body, she wouldn’t let him into the house, and he got a little destructive. I think he was mostly just annoying her until I brought Elena home. Elena was back. You weren’t, and if I hadn’t pulled him away from her, I’m not sure what Imelda would’ve done to him. He left after that, and I haven’t seen him since.”

By the end, he’d gotten quite sombre again. “He attacked Elena?”

“He didn’t attack her. He just got . . . aggressive. He attacked me, but Elena told him that if he was going to blame anyone, it should be her, so he did.”

“Why would he attack you if Rebekah killed us?”

“Because Elena was alive when I found them, and she asked me to save Matt first, so I did.”

He was right. I could understand why Damon would attack him if him respecting Elena’s choice had come at my expense. I could see why Damon had gotten aggressive with Elena too. Rebekah hadn’t killed Elena. Elena had killed Elena . . . and me. “Did she know she would come back?”

“No . . . when she was at the hospital, her injuries were worse than Dr. Fell said, and she gave her – “

“Dr. Fell?! I thought Liz told her to stop giving vampire blood to her patients.”

“She must not have listened.”

And people thought I was overreacting by not going to that hospital. If you’re given something like vampire blood, you should know about it, so you can act accordingly. “So, Elena would’ve just died if she’d had it her way. Is it because of what I said to her?”

“What’d you say?”

“That she was asking me to choose between keeping her alive and saving people. I said I could find a way to do both, but I couldn’t choose one or the other, because I couldn’t turn my back on half of who I am . . . and then when I called her, I told her I didn’t think I could go do the normal life thing with her . . . did she think that I meant she wasn’t worth it, or – “

“No.” Coming around the corner, Elena shook her head. “I knew what you meant . . . You were still saying you wanted both, not that you weren’t choosing me, and that’s not something I should’ve ever asked you to do . . . I asked him to save Matt, because I didn’t want Matt to die.”

“Did you know that I would die too?”

She froze, and then her shoulders dropped as she shook her head. “I knew that Alec’s Dad was dead, and we weren’t.” Okay, so she’d thought we were separated too. “And I knew that even if it didn’t mean that we were separated, you would be coming back.”

Wait, so had she thought that we were separated or not? “So, you did know?”

She quickly shook her head. “No.” A brief pause, and then she added, “Look, the important thing is that nothing I did was because of anything you said. It wasn’t your fault . . . and you’re back now. I just wish you hadn’t had to see whatever it was you saw there.”

So maybe she hadn’t known for sure, but she’d considered it, and then decided that if I did die, then I was going to come back, so it was the best solution to a bad situation? I wasn’t sure that it mattered, but she obviously thought it did enough to not be completely honest about it right now. “I didn’t have eyes.”

“What?”

“I really didn’t want to lose my memories, and I must’ve made sure I wouldn’t, because I didn’t have eyes . . . just skin where eyes are supposed to be.” Noticing a crate next to me, I slid down to it and focused on the floor. “So I didn’t _see_ anything.”

“But I thought you found Alec.” I nodded to let her know I had, and she asked, “How did you do that if you couldn’t see?”

“I read Dante’s _Inferno_. I think whoever created that world read it too. I suppose Dante could have owned the die at some point and wrote _Inferno_ , but he would’ve had to see it in his future, because I don’t think it’s designed for you to see what’s going on around you until you die the last time.”

“How did you know that’s what it was based on though?”

“Loathsome maggots and worms.”

When I looked up at her, I could see she didn’t know what I meant, but Stefan did. “That’s where the Uncommitted go, right?” 

“I don’t exactly commit to a side, do I?”

Yeah, he’d definitely read the _Divine Comedy_ at some point, because that made him extremely uncomfortable. “That seems a little harsh.”

“Well, it was Hell, so . . . “

Elena asked, “Is that where Alec was,” and I shook my head, but I could tell she wanted more than that, and she was just going to keep asking me questions. With a sigh, I dropped the vervain onto the ground and focused on that instead of either of them.

“First, I went to Limbo, which is where I would’ve put him, but he wasn’t there, so I went to the fifth circle, and I found him . . . under the water . . . I had to jump in to get him out and finally got him in the ferry, but then this seaweed wrapped around me and pulled me back under. I knew that the talisman wanted me to take his place, but thought that might just be the kind of sacrifice that would destroy that world if I agreed to it, and it let me go. It tried to stop me again before I could get back in the boat, but that time it used the wrathful on the surface. They started attacking me, and I had weapons, but there were so many of them. Alec jumped back in to help and started to say that it could have him back if they stopped, and I let the talisman know that if it let him do that, it would be another sacrifice, so it let us both go . . . and then Alec wanted to talk to his Dad, so he could say all the things he could never say when he was alive . . . He didn’t want to go back under the water again. When he was down there, he had to relive probably the worst moment of his life over and over again . . . Anyway, I thought his Dad might be in the 9th circle, so I took him, and the things he said to his Dad . . . about the things his Dad did to him . . . ” 

I remembered every word. He may have been let out to go to school, but he’d grow up more alone than I ever did. How was it possible that I’d done the nicest thing for him when he was alive? What about Katie? He hadn’t even known her long enough for her to have a chance to do something nice for him, had he? It’d burned fast and bright, like a meteor full of possibilities, before she was taken from him, and it hurt him so much because those days or weeks had been the only bit of light in his entire life. It was heart breaking, and if that was true, then the only genuinely nice thing anyone had done was buy him clothes with no other agenda than to have a normal day and help him start a new life . . . Those clothes were probably still in Jeremy’s room along with his other things.

I should probably clear them out and take them home. As the closest thing to ‘next of kin’ he had, I wanted them. I'd leaked a couple of tears and used my sleeve to wipe them away only to see more black show up on the cloth. Lifting it in their direction, I asked, “Does that look black to you?” They shared a look before looking back at me with a single nod. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” 

Either because she wanted to know more about where her decision had sent me or to take my attention off of something that was clearly becoming a problem, Elena said, “Is that when you came back? You said you needed to get his Dad away from him and make sure he was okay.”

I shook my head. “We were going to go check out Paradise . . . to see if the control center was there, but mostly just to hang out and explore. I didn’t know how long we’d have, since I didn’t roll the die, and I told Imelda not to let anyone touch it, but the ring and the talisman must’ve come to some kind of a magical accord, because a representation of my body showed up in the middle of the 9th circle, somewhere near Lucifer . . . The second Alec told me that he saw it, everything shook . . . and then he asked if that was my ride out of there, and everything started shaking, but it didn’t stop . . . there was ice falling from the ceiling, and these big cracks opening up in the walls and floor . . . He thought it was me, but it wasn’t. It was the die . . . It could read our minds, and we both thought the same thing . . . ‘You take it.’”

“What?” I looked up at Elena, and she was starting to get angry. “Are you saying that you were going to stay there and let him out in your – “

“How is it any different than what you did with Matt?” That shut her up. Looking back down at my feet, I said, “At any rate, because we were both willing to make the sacrifice, it was trying to stop us, and then I thought that if I sacrificed myself there was a chance it may not work, because I knew that a sacrifice was needed, which meant that I’d be getting something out of it, and that wouldn’t make it a true sacrifice, but he didn’t know anything about it, so if he sacrificed himself, it was the only way to save him, and I realized that me letting him do that would be the real sacrifice I had to make . . . we’d hit it from both sides, and it’d be checkmate.” 

My voice shook just a little, and I took a breath to steady it. “I set him up for it . . . didn’t even really need to do much other than say, ‘you take it,’ and he wouldn’t, so I said I’d share, and he said he wasn’t going to take half my life away from me, and then he picked me up and tried to carry me there, but I changed my mind and wished myself away from him and started running to buy myself time, so I could come up with another plan and tripped over a head in the ice, and he caught up with me, picked me up again and said that if I wasn’t going to leave a circle he was in because I didn’t know if it’d send him back, and if I couldn’t see, then it wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t get away from him . . . that it was on him. He was trying to absolve me of blame, so I wouldn’t feel guilty about it, but that was never going to work, and I was saying something so inconsequential that I don’t even remember it now when we fell, and we fell, because the talisman let his Dad out to stop us. He threw me down some never ending crevice in the ice. I was falling and falling, but I made myself stop, because I didn’t want to sever whatever connection I had to Alec, and then I started flying back up, like in rewind and by the time I got there . . . Alec’s Dad . . . I don’t know what he did to Alec, but it sounded bad, and I went full hunter . . . I didn’t want to know the future, and I didn’t care about the consequences . . . I just wanted to destroy the thing that had done so much damage to Alec and that Alec couldn’t protect himself from because he loved the thing that’d been hurting him, so I asked for my eyes back . . . and woke up in the trunk of a car.”

It should’ve been Elena crouching down in front of me, since she’s the one who brought this all up, but it wasn’t, and I think it wasn’t, because I’d gone and made her feel guilty about killing me and sending me there. That had never been my intention and was probably why it would’ve been better if I’d just said all this to Damon later, which I probably would and in greater detail, like when I told him my Princess Without A Name story. For now, it would appear that I was stuck with his brother. He handed me something that I suspected was a handkerchief of some kind, and I almost mocked him for having one, but he beat me to it. “I know it’s old fashioned, but so am I. Just go with it.” I used it to wipe my face, and he said, “That sounds like a pretty abrupt change.”

It had been. “You want to know if I think what's happening now is real."

Smiling awkwardly, Stefan asked, "Do you?"

 _The answer to what you really want to know, Stefan, is that yes, I knew this was real when I killed those two men. I may have wished it wasn't, but I knew, and I told you I didn't want to talk about it with you._ "I suppose I've known, since I got sick, because I couldn't get sick in Hell, and then I figured out that Elena was in transition. That confirmed it."

"So before that . . . "

"Before that, I knew that when the talisman takes your memories, everything you see is the future, and it feels real, except it comes in snippets and of multiple futures for one specific thing, but I said I’d take whatever the consequences were for getting my eyes back, and I thought that maybe to break me down, the talisman was having me confront some issues with my dead sister before sending me back for my fight.”

He carefully said, “That actually makes sense,” and I nodded.

“I thought so.”

“I'm guessing it didn't help that you had no idea how you came back?"

What was he getting at? "I know this is real."

"I believe you."

"Then I don't understand why - "

"Because I can see how much this is affecting you, and you did a good thing, but I don't think you know that." Well, it would appear that Elena had shared her theory about me being taken for granted in the time I'd been outside too. "How are you back?”

"Alec must have - ”

“I don't think it was, Alec. I think that through it all, the one thing you didn’t want to lose wasn’t your life . . . It was your memories of that life, and you were willing to give those up if it meant getting some kind of justice for your friend. That sounds to me, like the biggest sacrifice you could’ve made under the circumstances.”

“But I didn’t do anything . . . I just . . . I flipped my switch and - ”

“You’re not a vampire.”

“Maybe not, but I do have a switch . . . You were in World War II, the way Damon was in the Civil War. I’m sure you know the switch I’m talking about if you think about it . . . and mine has been used a lot.” Taking my finger and miming that I was using a light switch, I said, “On, off, on, off.” He smiled as he remembered me saying that to him when his switch had been flipped, and I added, “And mine will break too one day . . . but not like when a vampire’s does. No matter what they say, vampires go to permanently on . . . a hunter’s goes permanently off.”

“That isn’t going to happen to you.”

Today's record seemed to say otherwise. “I hope you’re right.” 

“I know I am, and if you’re ever in doubt, hold on to how you feel about my brother. Don’t let go of that. That’s the best advice I can give. I know you know what I mean.” Yeah, we’d been in the trenches together for a while, and I knew how bad he got last summer. The only thing that’d kept him from flipping his switch had been Elena. Taking a slow breath, I nodded. “Are you going to talk to him about the other stuff?” 

I would tell Damon everything, but what I wanted more than anything was just to see him and have him hug me. I'm not sure I'd ever needed that more in my life. It might take longer than I'd like. I didn't think I'd be leaving here until night either. “Yeah.” 


	7. Cursed

“Stefan, we have to do something. It’s getting worse.” 

I was sitting back against a wall with my eyes closed. It’d been a long day, and I was tired, but I had a prime spot to guard the door, so I was more alert than I looked. “I can hear you, you know.”

“Eve, you’re really pale.”

“Bah!”

Suddenly crouching down in front of me, she said, “I’m serious. You’re more pale now than you were when you were actually dead. “ Reaching out to touch me, she added, “And you feel ice cold.”

That seemed to get Stefan’s attention. “What?”

She looked at him over her shoulder. “Is that normal? I haven’t had coffee yet. I thought we were supposed to be the ones who were cold."

 _Maybe if I just keep my eyes closed, they'll go away._ I heard Stefan take a knee next to her as he said, “We are," but before he could touch my forehead too, I muttered, “I’m not playing doctor with you two, so cut it out. I’m fine.”

I heard him pull back and smirked, but Elena either missed it or ignored it as she turned to him, still on a mission. “And am I imagining it, or is she starting to make this side of the barn feel cold just by being here?”

She wasn’t going to let this go, was she? Might as well engage. Finally opening my eyes, I asked, “Do I smell of rotting flesh?”

Elena quickly shook her head. “No,” and I went to Stefan for the truth, but he silently agreed with her assessment. 

“Well, that's something, I guess.”

Watching me, Elena asked, “You think you do?”

“Not me . . . when I got sick earlier it smelled just like the 5th circle, but the black stuff that leaked out of my eyes earlier didn’t smell like anything.”

“You need to get out of here and go find Bonnie or Imelda, whichever one is closer.”

“I’m not leaving until it’s dark.”

“You don’t need to stay for me. I’ll be fine. Just let Stefan get you out of here.”

Casually dismissing that idea, I said, “First of all, you’re a baby vampire, and I’m not leaving you here alone. Second of all, I am not going back outside right now.”

Giving in to curiosity after having the chill in the air brought to his attention, Stefan lifted his hand in my direction. “May I?” 

At least he’d asked for permission. “Knock yourself out.” 

Reaching forward to touch my forehead, he did a terrible job of hiding his concern. “You really think the sun caused this?”

“I think it makes it worse . . . When you’re a vessel for evil, then light doesn’t particularly mix well with it, does it?”

Elena said, “You’re not a vessel for evil,” at the same time, Stefan said, “You think the magic from the die was transferred onto you?”

It was as likely as anything else. If I did destroy the talisman, then I destroyed the thing that was holding the curse, and the curse could’ve gone out into the universe to do whatever it was that curses did when they were released, but I was keeping it from doing that by giving it a home, and since it didn’t really have a brain, then the things it was programmed to think were good, like the sun, might impact on me. Pointing at Elena, I said, “Trying to make me feel better, and not a real solution.” Looking at Stefan, I answered, “If I’m as cold as she says I am, then maybe. In literature, evil manifests as cold as often as it does hot . . . just depends on the lore you read.”

Nodding, he said, “And in Dante’s Hell, the worst place was a frozen lake.”

“Exactly. I don’t think I’m harboring any souls other than mine in me, and I’m not sure that the world the talisman created is there anymore, but as a way to carry on the curse by turning me into some kind of conduit into a new world? It’s not beyond the realm of possibility. It really seemed like the magic running the show had a mind of its own in there. It was like some kind of artificial intelligence that was learning as it went and kept changing its strategy after it went into survival mode.”

Elena quickly asked, “What does that mean?” I didn’t answer. “Stefan, what does that mean?”

“She’s just . . . look, we’ll be okay around her, because we’re already dead, but we can’t really let any humans get close enough to touch her until we figure this out.”

Elena’s attention shot back to me. “But you’ve been touching people since you woke up . . . There was the guy by the car, and you stabbed Pastor Young, and then – “ She stopped when she remembered that I’d killed the other two. “Did they die because – “

Stefan cut her off. “We don’t know how it works yet, Elena. If it’s the same curse with new rules, because it’s latched itself onto a person instead of an object, then it could be anything.”

“But she touched two, and then two others died. She doesn’t kill people, Stefan. She just doesn’t. It has to mean something.”

Did it really though? “Or sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence.” 

Elena pointed at me as she said, “Trying to make me feel better, and not a real solution.”

I hadn’t said it to make her feel better. I’d said it to make her stop talking about it. I already felt horrible about it and didn’t want her making excuses for me. I knew those men had just been people who were scared of something they didn’t really understand, and I’d used lethal force against them. Had I done it to protect her? Yes. They’d taken us hostage. She was dying, and they wouldn’t let us go so she could get blood if she wanted it. They’d been iffy on whether either of us was human and would have done the same thing to us given the chance. Did that make it right? Not if you were like me and knew that fighting against humans was very different from fighting against monsters and required a different level of response. 

“The only person I touched today was you. I used a tire iron and gun on the last two, and I didn’t actually touch the first two either. I knocked the wind out of one when I punched him, but he was fully clothed, so no skin on skin contact, and I grabbed the Pastor’s wrist . . . he was wearing long sleeves. Again, fully clothed and no skin on skin contact . . . Maybe, just maybe, I really did kill those last two for no other reason than I used excessive force, and it has nothing to do with this.”

“No . . . I don’t believe that. You wouldn’t have just gone through everything you went through to save people and then turn around and kill other people like that.” 

That’s exactly what was making this so difficult for me. “Elena, I know what I did.”

“But you – you said that you stopped feeling sick around then. Maybe to get better you have to kill people.“

That was a terrible idea to bring into this conversation, and she’d better never ever say that to Damon. “What, so I’m a vampire without the perks now?”

Stefan stepped in to try and keep this from derailing even further. “No . . . no, that’s not what – “

Looking over at him, Elena said, “I don’t think that’s a bad way to describe it.”

I shook my head. “I was being sarcastic.” When she looked at me, she seemed doubtful. “Elena, I’m not a vampire without the perks. I’m me. I’ve just come down with a bad curse, and - “

“It’s making you kill people!”

She was obsessing the way all vampires had a tendency to do. Damon with getting Katherine out of the tomb; Katherine with Stefan; Stefan with his guilt; Klaus with making hybrids, etc. They all did it, and they all had more than one obsession. Hers would change, and they’d get stronger or weaker over time, but right now, she was starting to obsess over me, and I wasn’t sure that I was up for dealing with it, especially when it almost always meant the vampire was making it about themselves. “Stop trying to make this about you. Those deaths are my cross to bear, not yours.” My words hung in the air just a little too long, and I slumped back against the wall before looking to Stefan for help. “She’s fixating.”

“I’m not – “

Knowing what I meant, he cut her off. “You are a little. You’re trying to find ways to take the blame away from her, but you’re not helping her by doing it. Be glad you have a sister who wants to own it.”

“But it isn’t her fault. It’s mine.”

Yeah, that’s what I thought. To make her feel better about something she’d decided to claim as her own, I was having to point out over and over again that I was the real piece of shit murderer. His shoulders fell. He actually felt sorry for her for feeling guilty about it, didn’t he? “Elena – “

Luckily, she kept him from having to go into all the reasons why it wasn’t her fault. “It is, because I did it to her too.” I didn’t know what she was talking about and was too worn down mentally to care about asking, so I just decided to let Stefan take that one. 

“Did what to her too?”

“She couldn’t sacrifice Alec, because she knows how that feels. John and Isobel did it to her, and I did too . . . when I chose Matt. I thought she’d be okay. I didn’t know any of this would happen.”

So she had considered that I might die when she made her choice to die . . . except she hadn’t known I’d be okay. She’d come to talk me into getting rid of the die, specifically because she knew it was going to be bad, but Stefan didn’t know that. It might seem like a small thing that she was being dishonest about to both him and herself, but when that dishonesty led to a growing obsession with my well-being because of her guilt, then she needed to address the real thing she felt guilty about instead of finding reason after reason to deny it. She’d weighed up the options, and regardless of what happened to me, she’d chosen Matt . . . not that I held it against her. I told her that if I could find a way to keep it from killing her too, then tackling that underworld was what I wanted, and I’d meant it. “Yeah, well hindsight and all of that, but I don’t blame you for it any more than I blame Rebekah or Matt. It is what it is.”

Her shoulders fell. “I really hate it when you say that, and you say it all the time.”

There was probably a reason I did. “It needs to be said . . . nobody can change the past, and it becomes a problem when all we can see is the thing we want to change instead of focusing on the present and finding ways to be better in the future. And if I’m being honest, then even knowing what I know now and all the things I don’t know yet, I’d do it all again in a second if it means those souls really got out.”

“But now you might be putting more somewhere that could be even worse.”

“Maybe . . . but I’m too tired, and I’m too drained to think about it anymore right now. It’s been a really, really, really long day that includes arguing with Damon; arguing with you; training with a new instructor; making amends with Imelda who got her powers back by throwing me around your house; explaining to Alice why I had to be at a storage unit that was like 100 miles away on the longest drive in history; killing Alec’s Dad and still losing Klaus; thinking Damon and all the other vampires in town were going to die only to die myself and wind up in Hell blind and on a trek that felt like it lasted for a lot longer than a day. Then I woke up to find myself in a trunk and men pointing guns at me . . . getting sick, and my sister in the end stages of turning without having fed. Then I got into a couple of fights, some people died, and I’m here looking like a corpse from Hell, arguing with you about I don’t even know what anymore . . . that I say, it is what it is? Or that I wouldn’t change a single moment of it if it at least saved some completely innocent souls that were being tortured for who knows how long and hopefully Alec too . . . I mean, right now, I’m really, really hoping that one of the consequences for what I did wasn’t leaving him behind to face his Dad alone or possibly even making him cease to exist at all.”

When I was done, I took a deep breath and rested my head on the wall behind me, while I waited for her response. Eventually, she gave me the flicker of a smile before she said, “I think your day may actually be worse than mine.”

“Today . . . I’m sure you’ll make up for it in the days that follow.”

“You really think so?”

That she was going to have bad days as a vampire? “I know it.”

“How can you be so sure?” 

Stefan got up to go assess the sun situation through a window on the other side of the barn, but he could still hear everything. This was really something he should be saying to her, and now I wondered if he’d really meant it when he said that he wasn’t ready to deal with the Elena he knew being different now, but I was her sister, so maybe it should fall to me. I didn’t know as much about it as he did, because I’d never been a vampire, but I did know quite a bit about it, and I knew the kinds of internal demons Elena was going to have to face.

“I think it’s probably different for everyone, but for you? People around you will die, whether it’s tomorrow or when they’re 100, they will die, and that is going to be the thing that is hardest for you to bear. Your fear of losing people when you were alive is what led you here, and the feelings behind the fear - the pain, sorrow, and the void you can never fill? Those are going to be magnified now. You’ll make mistakes, and you’ll kill people, but that won’t be what hurts you the most. Just take each day as it comes, and when the days get too long, take each moment as it comes.” 

“How do you know all that . . . about me?”

My mouth curled up into a smirk. “You’re my sister. It’s my job to know.”

“I’m being serious.”

So was I. “People feel grief to varying degrees. Some can handle it better than others. You chose to surround yourself with vampires who are harder to kill than a normal human, and you were also willing to die multiple times just so you wouldn’t have to lose anyone. That’s less about saving them for them and more about you not being able to live without them. It tells me that grief is not something you could deal with when you were human, and you will probably have a worse time with it now.”

“Well, it’s better than how you deal with it.”

My eyebrow arched at her defensiveness. “You asked. I answered. I’m not judging.” 

She relaxed and then snickered briefly before asking, “Did I really say you were the smartest person in the room earlier?”

“Sure did.”

“Then can you tell me if you’re going to be okay?”

She’d said smartest, not the most honest, and I wasn’t sure why she was equating the two now. “Aren’t I always?”

“Eve?”

My shoulders gave ever so slightly, and I sighed. “Probably. I just need to learn how to manage this until I can get rid of it. I'm mostly tired right now. Death was not a peaceful sleep for me.”

Before she could say anything else, Stefan did. “I think we can go now.” 

Elena offered me her hand to help me up, and I took it, but I didn’t really need it. She watched me as I got to my feet, but I was steady. I might feel colder than any human could be and live. I might even look like I was in the beginning stages of desiccation, but I didn’t move like I was. I wasn’t frozen. I wasn’t sore. I moved like me on a good day. “See? I'm fine.” 

She still wouldn’t give me more than a couple of inches. “Yeah, well . . . let’s get you to someone and have you checked out any way.” It was going to get annoying if she continued to do this hovering thing she’d been doing. I knew it had to be because she felt guilty, and I also knew that me absolving her of any wrong doing in my eyes wasn’t going to be enough to get her to stop fixating on it. I went through this with my Mom, who had also felt guilty right off the bat about me, and I didn’t want to go through that again with Elena. It felt false. She hadn’t been like this when she was alive. She’d kept a healthy distance that a strong curiosity and a desire for more family had started to erode, but to go from that to this? It wasn’t natural, and I didn’t want that.

When we got to the door, Stefan stepped in front of her saying, “Do you hear that?”

Her head turned towards the house. “Damon?” 

She went to go around him, and he stepped in front of her again. I didn’t know what they talked about after that or care what it was, because I was off at a run the second she’d said Damon’s name. It didn’t take me long to see him, and when I did, he wasn’t alone. The Pastor was on the porch, so I guess I really hadn’t killed him by grabbing his wrist earlier, which was good, and Matt was with Damon. All three didn’t notice me . . . neither did a fourth guy hidden in the darkness outside the reach of the porch lights. 

Where had he been? Probably town. Were there more? Not that I could see. The important thing was that I could see him, and I could see his target. I changed course as my run turned into a sprint. _Should I shoot him? No. There’s been enough shooting for one day, and if he’s going to use a shotgun, then he’s going to need to get closer than that, so I have time. Try not to even touch him if you can help it._ I got to within 4 feet of him without anyone being the wiser, hit the ground, and slid into him feet first from the side. His legs flew up over my head, and by the time he hit the ground, I’d gotten back onto my feet. Kicking him in the hand that still held the shotgun, I disarmed him, bent down to scoop the weapon up, and used the butt of it to crack him in the forehead. 

He stopped moving, and I heard a strangled yell come from towards the house. Damon. What was he doing gnawing on Matt’s neck? He was so frenzied in his emotions right now that he hadn’t heard any of what just happened. Let’s see if he heard this. 

I cocked the gun, shot a blast into the air, and rested the barrel on my shoulder in a casual stance. He was still vamped out when he turned. Red eyes, black veins, blood dripping down his face, and a cocky demeanor, like he was looking forward to killing whoever it was. All that slid away when he saw that it was me. It was quickly replaced with an almost schoolboy regret that I’d caught him in the act as he considered looking down at Matt, but almost just as fast, his brow furrowed in uncertainty, which made him look even more human. He didn’t know that I knew exactly who he was. 

I should make him wait. It’s not like he didn’t deserve it, running around being a bully and general pain in the ass to everyone while I was gone . . . on the other hand, he’d been running around being a bully and general pain in the ass to everyone while I was gone. With a wry smile, I asked, “What, you think I’d fire a warning shot for just anyone?” and the weight of the world lifted off his shoulders. 

He didn’t even wait long enough to come back with a witty reply before he took off in my direction and had me wrapped up in a hug just shy of being tight enough to hurt me. “How much is left?”

Damon knew that Alec had remembered his time here in Mystic Falls when he saw me by the well, so it made sense that Damon would think that by seeing him, I’d only remember things about our life together. He could live with that if it’s all he got, but it wasn’t what he wanted. I was a person who’d had a life outside of him, and it had gone a long way in making me who I was. He really wanted every part of me no matter how screwed up it was. I don’t think I could put into words how much that meant to me. “Every second . . . I’m all here.”

He absorbed that, and I felt him relax. A few moments later, he finally said, “You’re freezing.”

“Well, I guess you’ll get to see what it’s like for me to sleep next to you now.” 

He loosened his hold and looked down at me. “And you’re looking – “

“Cadaverous?”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “Like the prettiest walking corpse I’ve ever seen.” His smirk slowly fell. “Should I be worried?” 

“Not right now.” Uh, yeah, that wasn’t code for ‘you should be kissing me instead’. He leaned down, and I leaned back. “Hold that thought. I’ve been spewing Hell sludge, and you’re still wearing Matt.” Tilting my head in Matt’s direction, I added, “Speaking of, you should probably take care of that.”

“Stefan is.”

“Mm . . . but it should be you. Didn’t even consider that if you killed him, it’d mean I died for nothing, did you?”

My eyebrow ticked up in expectation and being contrary, he said, “You didn’t do any of this for him.”

“And yet I did still die to save him.” 

“Yeah, literally, but it wasn’t some great sacrifice you wanted to make. You didn’t even know he was involved. It wasn’t your choice.” 

“No. It wasn’t, but I don’t blame him for it. I don’t blame anyone for anything.” 

He touched his lips to my forehead before resting his head against mine. “I know. That’s what you have me for . . . and what do you mean by Hell sludge?”


	8. I Trust You

I’d been back for at least a day and still didn’t know if the souls the talisman had imprisoned were free or if Alec was okay. I had no real way of finding out either. The demon die was gone, because it was with Imelda and Alice, and they’d vanished. Imelda may have been willing to torch Damon for being aggressive with Elena, but she had to be taking some time to figure out how she felt about Elena being a vampire now. Wherever she was doing that, she was doing it with Alice, or she’d killed Alice, because there was still no sign of my third roommate. 

Bonnie couldn’t help either. She’d lost her powers again, and this is where my understanding of magic needed a little work. You weren’t supposed to kill people with spirit magic, but you could with dark magic. I understood that, so it made sense to me that even though the life she’d taken using magic was her own, it’d still been an innocent life taken before its time, but then she’d brought herself back to life, which reset the balance of nature back to where it was supposed to be, and it’s not like she’d actually succeeded in bringing a transitioning Elena back to life, because Elena had already been a vampire by then, so all of that just warranted a warning, but what the hell happened when she saved Klaus?

She put his spirit in Tyler to save Klaus’s line of vampires, and then she put Klaus back in his own body, but all of that could be done using spirit magic, so why’d she get in trouble for that? It must not have been what she did, but how she did it. Without being able to experience the difference between the two types of magic, I could probably read 100 books on it and never fully understand how tapping into either one felt or even how to do it. All I really knew was that one was bad, the other a little less so, and using the bad magic pissed off the dead people who were like gatekeepers of the better magic, so all you were stuck with was bad magic or no magic. If Bonnie didn’t want to use dark magic anymore, then she was left with nothing, and it would appear that’s what she had right now.

Then there was Aja and her coven. I could go to them to find out what I wanted to know, but I didn’t know those witches well enough to trust that they wouldn’t just kill me if they thought that I was a threat to other people with the curse I seemed to have. If they did, then I wasn’t entirely sure that my ring would bring me back anymore. The curse might interfere. In fact, I wasn’t sure what would happen if I took the ring off either. 

Jeremy had been the soul that the talisman had tried to take in exchange for Alec, and he was never a game master, so our situations were different, but when he came back, he was himself as long as he was wearing the ring. It’s not like I thought the curse was going to replace me or anything, because it wasn’t a person, but if his ring protected him, then maybe mine was protecting me, and until I knew for sure that it wouldn’t make things worse if I took it off, then it was better to keep wearing it. 

I also couldn’t just use the anti-magic serum without knowing for sure what it would do to me, and it's not like the curse was that bad. I took a cold shower that felt warm, brushed my teeth, and got some sleep. None of those things may have helped me look any better, but I felt fine. 

Someone burst in through the door and landed on the bed next to me. Pulling down the comforter I had covering my head, Damon studied me, and asked, “Done wallowing yet?”

It's not that he’d left me to it and was just checking in on me now. Unlike my parents, who’d mostly never noticed when I was struggling with the weight of having done evil acts or who had noticed and just left me to figure it out on my own, Damon found ways to prod me into talking about it. It did seem to help me work it out faster, but I was also more motivated to make it work this time, because this time, wallowing had made me feel sick. I hadn’t wanted to throw up in front of him, so I’d had to get it together in record time, which actually helped the sickness subside. I hadn’t been great, but I hadn’t been at rock bottom when he left to go in search of Imelda at her cabin. I’d been okay. “You knew I was before you left, or you wouldn’t have left.”

“Well, I know I finally got you to agree that you’re allowed to protect yourself from any threat, human or not, by any means necessary without being the worst person in the history of the world, but you’re still where I left you. Let’s get out of here for a while.”

“Is it dark?”

Using his fingers to brush my messy hair out of my face, he murmured, “Mmhm . . . Have I told you how much I like the new look?”

A few times. “I’m fairly certain that I look like a Hell beast right now.”

“More like a starlet from one of the old black and white picture shows but in a multi-color world.” When I didn’t immediately shoot that down, he briefly smiled. “Did I finally get one right?”

As complements go, it wasn’t the worst. My answer was a slow growing grin, and he ducked down to within an inch of my mouth before I asked, “What if I hurt you?” He and I may have touched, but we still didn’t know what was wrong with me or what kissing might do to him.

Hovering where he was, he answered, “I don’t care about that,” but then he didn’t exactly close the distance either. I could feel his breath on my lips, and the longer he stayed where he was, the more our breathing started to synchronize. I let my hand come up to the side of his face and adjusted my angle, but stopped just shy of letting my lips touch his. I really shouldn’t. He wasn’t making this easy though. It didn’t help when his hand began to caress my side. I would’ve thought he was tempting me into breaking first, like this was some kind of a game, but it was less that and more that he was struggling not to give into his own urge. “I don’t want it to hurt you.” 

“It won’t.”

He purred, “Then there’s nothing stopping me,” before letting his lips graze mine, but then he paused again. “But if the sun – “ Whatever he had to say, did he have to say it like this? Planning to ask him that, I quietly whined, “Damon,” and his mouth brushed against mine again. Rather than retreat, I felt myself giving into it, and this time he lingered, because we were both waiting to see what happened. When nothing did, the kiss deepened, and my comforter went flying to the other side of the room as he settled over me. I wrapped myself around him, and the more I focused on him, the better I felt. 

It almost made sense. The 9th circle was an icy landscape, because it was the furthest place from the sun. Satan betrayed god, and in the story, the sun represented god, so the sun might make me feel worse if the evil curse I was harboring was coded to think that’s how evil should react to it, but human warmth and love . . . those come from within. If you had them, then you weren’t supposed to be in the 9th circle, but if you did manage to make it there, then it couldn’t take them from you, and human warmth had actually been the one thing that’d made the 9th circle even a little bearable when I was there. I should still make sure I wasn’t siphoning something from him, like a succubus though. “Damon?”

I didn’t think he was going to let me get more than that out, but in the back of his mind, he must’ve been waiting for this to all go up in flames, because he quickly pulled back to look at me. Concern was written all over his face, but then his forehead creased in uncertainty. “Am I imagining it, or is your color coming back?”

I studied him to see if anything was transferring over to him, but it didn’t look like it. “It might be . . . in the short term at least.“

On his way back to me, he smirked. “Well, then I say we stay in tonight, and I keep trying to kiss you better.” 

His mouth claimed mine, and my hands slid to his back as I pulled him closer. _This is real. This is real. This is real._ He was real, and I was really with him. I was pretty sure that I was out of the die’s world, but there were times when I still questioned it. I didn't want this to be one of them. My fingers began to explore, not out of any real sense of urgency, but because they could. They eventually made their way to the buttons on his shirt, and as they nimbly got the first two, he mumbled, “Just tear it open,” against my lips.

“But you like your shirts.”

He smiled into the kiss. “Not as much as I like you . . . But here, let me help you out.” Getting to his knees, he reached back, grabbed his shirt, and slipped it off over his head in a fluid motion before settling back between my thighs. Without missing a beat, he picked back up right where he’d left off. In what felt like way too short a time, but probably wasn’t, his hands searched out mine and gently pinned them on either side of my head to make me stop touching him. Looking down at me, he took a couple of heavy breaths before saying, “Unless you plan on joining me, Miss Modest, I think – “

“Okay.” He didn’t look convinced. “What? I just came back from Hell and brought a piece of it back with me. I don’t think taking my shirt off around you is that big of a deal anymore.”

“It’s not that simple. The longer this goes on - the further we go - the harder it is for either one of us to stop. I don’t think it’s a good idea . . . especially because of what you’ve been through lately.”

“I’m not fragile because of it.”

“I know . . . I just don’t want you to regret it.”

It wasn’t just that he didn’t want me to regret it. He didn’t want me to regret it and do a runner. Before I died, that is something I might have done, but I didn’t think I would now. “Why would I?”

Looking uncertain and a touch concerned, Damon answered, “Do you not remember the whole, ‘People you care about have the power to hurt you the most,’ or – “

“I remember.” It’s why I’d kept him at arm’s length for as long as I did, and it was definitely why I used to get a little panicked when I felt myself giving him more than I thought I could afford to lose, but I guess I had faith that he wouldn’t crush those small, albeit vital pieces of me now. “But listen to my heart. You know what each beat means, right? What is that telling you? Or how about this?” Lifting my hand, so he could see it, I asked, “Is it shaking, or is it steady?”

His shoulders fell. “Eve, I’m trying to do the right thing. Do you know how hard that is for me to do?“

“But I’m different now. I can feel it.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. “Different how?”

“Would it be better if I listed how I’m the same first?” It was a distrustful nod that he gave me, almost like he was sure that I was about to destroy everything. “Well, I still laugh.” 

I paused to see how he took that, and he slumped a little more. “Tell me you’ve got more than that.”

“I still get sad and feel angry.”

I paused again, and he was starting to look like he thought that this was either me messing with him or me making something out of nothing. “And?”

“And I still believe in being the lightest shade of gray possible and feel guilty when I fall short of what I think is right. I’m still a smart ass, and I will still do things that you don’t want me to do, because I still feel that I have this huge responsibility to help whoever needs it most. It’s important that you know I still feel the same about a lot of things.”

I’d said that to try and let him know that how I felt about him hadn’t changed, and he took it to mean the opposite. “But?”

“It’s just . . . the anxiety is a lot less now, and I don’t feel that drive for a bigger and bigger fight to try and keep it at bay.” 

Damon finally relaxed. “That doesn’t sound like a bad thing.”

“I never said it was.”

“Probably should have led with that.” I shrugged, and he rolled his eyes. “Okay, so you’re more leveled out . . . It doesn’t change – “

“But that’s not all it is. I’m more confident in general. I know I am going to be the best hunter in generations, and I know I have nothing to prove to anyone, because I finally proved it to myself. I also know now that there are only two people that I can fully trust. They are the only two people I know who would have had my back in Hell no matter what; the brother I never had and you.”

His expression softened, and he bent down to touch his forehead to mine. He was seriously reconsidering his decision to put a stop to our being amorous, wasn’t he? I whispered, “Do you want me to keep going,” and he nodded, so I guess he wasn’t quite there yet, but he wanted to be. 

“Everyone else falls into lesser categories. When they need help, I am there, and it’s often at great personal cost to myself. It may not always be help in the ways they want it to be, but I am there, and unless it’s convenient for them, I do not get the same in return. In fact, some are more than willing to sacrifice me if it means getting something they want . . . I don’t blame them for that, because I still empathize with why they do the things they do, and the past can’t be changed, so I don’t want to dwell on it, but I also won’t be forgetting it any time soon, which means I don’t trust them, and I know that you wouldn’t throw me away like that. You don’t think I’m nothing . . . And I’ve known this for a while, but now I’m able to tell you that there is no doubt in my mind that you are it for me, and unless you change your mind about me, then – “ His mouth angled down over mine, and I savored how it felt for just a little too long before making myself say the important thing I’d wanted him to know. “I won’t leave you.” 

He didn’t give me room to say or think anything else after that. His fingertips forged warm paths on the skin along my stomach and sides, like they were reverently testing to see how I responded at first, and as he gradually went from feeling warmer than me to cooler when my temperature became more normal, his touches became more committed. He tugged up on the bottom of my shirt, so he could have access to more of me, and I helped him get the clothing off over my head. My bra wasn’t anything special, because I’d mostly wanted to be comfortable when I put it on today, but he took the time to appreciate what he saw. 

When I didn’t shy away from him, his eyes softened as he dipped down to my neck. Instead of teasing me, he went straight to a spot that I liked and pulled as much pleasure out of it as possible. As his lips skimmed across my skin to another spot just below my ear, I heard him hum, “It’s not a choice . . . I won’t change my mind,” and it sent tingles down my spine. 

I asked a breathless, “Even if I’m different?” and he made his way back to my lips saying, “Never.” After that, I was more than good. I was actually feeling pretty great for the first time in I didn’t know how long, so of course someone had to go and ruin it.

We heard the knock, and it slowed our rhythm, but Damon said to ignore it. Did the person go away? No. Another knock, and then, “Damon?”

Breaking away from me in frustration, he shot the door a look. “Not now, Stefan!”

That seemed to be it, and Damon smiled as he started to close the distance between us, but then Stefan asked, “Did you ask her?”

“No, and I don’t need to ask her. I know she didn’t do it.”

“Maybe not on purpose, but . . . “

Damon weighed up his options before rolling his eyes. Crawling off of me, he went to the foot of my bed, and as I sat up, he threw the comforter over my head before pulling on his shirt and then opening the door. “Stop worrying about my girlfriend and worry about your own. We’re not going to start the game where every bad thing that happens in this town is Eve’s fault. The only one the curse has hurt so far is Eve.”

I peeked out from under the covers to figure out what they were talking about when I heard Elena say, “Nobody’s blaming her. We know it’s not her fault.” 

Damon turned on her, and I wouldn’t call it aggressive, more like exasperated by a conversation they’d already had at least once. “You sound like you already have your minds made up . . . This curse isn’t going around blowing up houses.” 

Yeah, no. No explosions with this curse, just me bringing around aspects of the 5th and 9th circles with me. Good thing I didn’t go to more than those two circles in Hell proper . . . except for Limbo, but it hadn’t been too bad. Pointing my finger in Damon’s direction, I mumbled, “I’m inclined to agree with him.”

It drew their attention onto me. They saw me with my tousled hair and eyes sticking out from under a big mound of blankets, correctly assumed what we’d been doing, and when their eyes turned up to him, I finally understood why Mr. Immodest had suddenly decided he needed a shirt. Stefan said what they were thinking first. “Damon, we talked about this. You need to keep your distance in case – “

I interrupted him. “Wait, are you two the reason he came in here thinking he might hurt me?” Turning my attention to Elena, I asked, “Who put you in charge of my medical care?”

“It’s not that. “ She took a step in my direction and quickly found that she couldn’t get past the threshold. “Let me in, and I can explain.”

I guess her being a vampire was one way to keep her from coming in here and annoying me or going through my stuff. “You can explain from there . . . or go away.”

“We don’t want this to get worse. It might make you sicker if – “

“So, you are trying to make decisions for me. Why is it that you’re free to make your own decisions, most of which are horrible, but then you think it’s okay to make them for me?”

“Eve - ” 

I pulled down the comforter so she could see my face. “Hello. Do I have more color or not?” 

Stefan looked from me to Damon, who seemed pretty pleased with himself. “For now Damon, but she was stable. What happens when she crashes?”

Damon’s expression started to morph into uncertainty, and I dryly said, “Well, then I guess that means a whole lot of lovin’ for me to keep me from crashing,” and it at least made Damon laugh, which had mostly been the point. “I’m with her on that one brother, so if you don’t mind – “

Stefan stopped Damon from shutting the door by saying, “If you two won’t listen to us about that, then we still need to find out if her being there caused it. If it did, then we need to contain it, so - ”

“Just say what you mean. You want to contain her . . . She’s not on house arrest. She stayed in today, because she slept through most of it and wallowed through the rest, but if she wants to leave tonight, or tomorrow or any other time, she will, and if you try to stop her, then I’ll take her away from here, and you won’t ever see her again.” 

He finished by focusing on Elena, like he knew she’s the one that would upset, and it did. “You can’t just kidnap – “

“Who says it’d be against her will? You gave her a good enough reason to want to go when you let her die.”

I was going to tell him to knock it off, because I didn’t need him speaking for me, but then Elena came out with, “He died, and we didn’t. I didn’t know that if I died it would happen to her too!”

I thought we’d gotten past this. It’d been a step forward when she admitted that she’d done it because she’d known that if I died, I’d be back, but now we were right back to her denying even that much. I wouldn’t mind, but the more she lied to herself and everyone else, the more guilt she’d feel, and the more she’d try to make up for it by doing things like making decisions for me. If she was regressing back a step, then Damon could take it this time. “That’s bullshit, Elena. You still knew it was a possibility.”

She hesitated before trying, “You’re right. I did. If we were a triangle, then only one point was gone, but I also knew that if she died, she’d come back, and I thought she’d be okay. I didn’t know – “

Now we were back to where she’d been yesterday. Still dishonest, but not as dishonest. Leaning into her face, Damon hissed, “Liar . . . I’m the one who told you it would be bad, so you could try and talk her out of it. Just admit it! You didn’t care about what it would actually do to her as long as you got to save Matt.” 

Her eyes teared up, and she looked from him to me. Finally, she ducked her head and nodded in agreement. Had he just gotten her to have a breakthrough of sorts? With the root of the problem now exposed, I quickly said, “Elena, it’s fine.“

It set Damon off. “Except it’s not fine. It’s not even in the same universe as fine.” Turning back to Elena, he added, “You might have given her what she wanted, so she doesn’t hold it against you, but I was there. She died in _my_ arms. While you were busy not giving a damn about her, I was thinking that she was about to be erased, and I’m the one who got to hear her last word. You wanna know what it was? It was, ‘Elena.’” 

Okay that last part wasn’t cool. “Too far Damon.” 

Without looking at me, he shook his head and glanced at Stefan. “That’s nowhere near far enough.” When his attention went back to Elena he added, “I don't want to see you right now . . . You need to leave.” 

He shut the door in their faces and waited until he was sure they were gone before walking back to the bed. Standing next to it as he looked down at me, he was a completely different person than he’d just been at the door, not a hint of viciousness about him. Not that he felt guilty about it either. All I saw was concern. “How bad is it?”

He really did know what every heartbeat meant. I’d been steadily feeling sicker the longer they’d been here. “Not as bad as before you left earlier.”

“Is it because – “ 

I shook my head. It wasn’t because I was crashing, but it was definitely a mood killer. “But I just want to lie here for a while if that’s okay.” He hesitated, and I rolled my eyes. I didn’t want him to go, and he was either thinking that I might or thinking that he should. “With you.” When he didn’t immediately climb in next to me, I held my hand out to him. He took it, and I smiled, which seemed to make him relax. He finally got in with me, and I curled into his side, while he put his arm under my head. Closing my eyes, I whispered, “Already feeling better.”

“Are you? If you’re not, and you’re saying you are, so – “ 

I put my finger over his lips and looked up at him. “I am, and I think I’m starting to understand why. Do you want to hear it?” He took my hand away from his face, intertwined his fingers with mine, and waited, but the expression on his face said he was doing it to humor me more than anything. “What are the circles I visited?”

l'd told him every detail when we got home last night, so I knew he knew. “The first, the fifth, and the ninth.”

“Uh huh, and when I get sick, it’s because the 5th is bubbling up to the surface. I’m cold because of the 9th. When I’m calm, like I'm starting to be now, then I’m not wrathful, so I don’t feel sick, and if a lack of human warmth is what makes the 9th so cold, then feeling human warmth lessens that; hence the color.”

His free hand pulled my hair back over my shoulder, while he thought about it. “You got angry while they were here, and that’s what made you feel sick?” 

“I wouldn’t say angry . . . annoyed? But I guess it’s still on the wrathful spectrum.”

“What about the black tears?”

Yeah, one or two of those had gotten away from me earlier before I’d had a chance to tell him about them. That’d gone down well. “Maybe it goes beyond wrath and includes more negative emotions, like grief, guilt, and sadness? I mean, those are feelings that feed anger.”

Coming around to my new theory, he asked, “The one time you actually got sick it was because of the sun, right?”

“Yeah, but that’s different. The way the curse was programmed to think of the sun is that the sun represents something good, so it reacts badly to it, but the curse can’t do anything about the internal things I feel that can dampen it.”

“Or make it worse.” Tracing shapes on my shoulder, he considered it and eventually said, “Without a witch around to say what it is, I guess we’ll go with that for now . . . and interacting with other people, going to school?” 

“If I can get around without skin-on-skin contact with anyone, then it should be okay, but I'll need to test out how long I can actually go in the sun first and possibly stay away from any windows, which might make it a little more difficult, since every classroom has them."

"What do you think will happen if you do touch someone?"

Nothing good. I was 100% sure of that. If it just marked someone, and they died, then the curse would draw people to me with it's power. I'd have to build myself an anti-magic room like the lock box I made for the demon die, and I've have to stay there permanently. If I didn't, then people would find ways to touch me, and they'd start dropping dead until the requisite number of souls had been sent into whatever Hell I was the gatekeeper of now. 

If the person who was marked didn't die until they were old, all of that could still happen, but I might already be dead by the time the person was dead, and if I was cremated, it wouldn't be a problem, but if the curse knew that, then it might change the rules and use it's power to kill the person faster or just make them drop dead on the first touch, so it could bring them back after enough other souls had paid the price for it, and I had no way of knowing how many that would be, because it's not like you could roll me to find out. 

Would I have to decide that for myself? That was not a position I wanted to be in at all, deciding who was worth what and killing people to bring him or her back or even deciding not to bring that person back and just leaving them in Hell? I may have been the game master in Hell, and I may be a hunter, but I didn't want the God-like powers associated with life and death over completely innocent people. It would irrevocably change me as a person if I had to live with that kind of guilt. Guilt that would just cause the curse to make me feel sick all the time. 

Also, until this curse was gone, the option of me being a vampire was completely off the table, because if I was a vampire, there's every chance that I could be around as long as the die had been and cause just as much damage. Being a vampire wasn't something I'd seriously wanted, but now that I couldn't be one . . . I wouldn't say I wanted to be one, but I didn't like the idea of not being able to be one either. The vampire next to me didn't need to know that our 'happily ever after' wasn't looking very 'ever after' at the moment if he didn't know it already. "I don’t know what will happen if I do touch someone. If I do, and it marks them in some way or kills them, then it will give this curse more power.”

After some more brooding and a heavy sigh, Damon shook his head. “Eve, you might be able to handle it, but that doesn’t mean you’re okay. What happened isn’t fine.”

“For me it is. For you it isn’t, and after hearing what you said at the door, I’m not going to try and talk you out of thinking that. It’s a legitimate grievance . . . I didn’t have to watch you die. I’m not sure how I would’ve reacted if you had.”

Wrapping his arm around me, he nuzzled into the hair at the top of my head. It seemed obvious now, but he’d really just needed someone to acknowledge what he’d been through and mean it. I should’ve done it sooner. “If you’re going to hunt, then I think you need to go back to hunting the way you did when you first got here.”

Hunting? What’d made him think of that? “What do you mean?”

“You were more detached. You didn’t let yourself care about the victims, so you wouldn’t get pulled into the anger and hate that drives other vampire hunters . . . I’m not saying you should stop trying to save people, but don’t take it as personally as you have been lately . . . at least until we either get rid of this or you find some kind of balance that works.”

I tilted my head to look up at him again when he was finished. “You’re helping me find ways to still be a hunter?”

Tucking his face against mine, he answered, “Well, if you’re going to be the greatest hunter in generations, then I want to see it. I’m still hoping to see you at your best.” 

It’d been a throw away comment that he’d said to me when he was dying from the werewolf bite, but he apparently remembered it, and it made me smile. “Then I won’t let you down. Might give you brownie points at the next vampire convention if you say you’re with the legendary princess with no name.” He exhaled a laugh, and I said, “And the real reason?”

“I didn’t know what I was going to get when you came back, but I would’ve taken anything. Now, you’re here. Nothing is missing, and I’m not willing to lose any part of you again.”

“Yeah?”

He smiled at my confrontational tone. “Mm.”

“Then now might be a good time to fill me in on what they were talking about. It definitely wasn’t because of me by the way. There weren’t any explosions in Hell.” It still sounded like something I should probably know.


	9. Going to the Doctor

There was one benefit to this curse business. I enjoyed figuring out the mystery surrounding what was wrong with me. Some of the results of the experiments I’d done when I was trying to figure out a way around the sun had been rather unpleasant, but figuring it all out was like a puzzle, and I liked that. It was a challenge. I was stuck at the bottom of the well trying to find my own way out. 

I also liked that without anything like a nifty daylight ring that the vampires in town all seemed to have, I had a legitimate excuse to only go out at night. I preferred the night more. It just suited me better. There were fewer people. It was better for hunting. It was better for hiding. It certainly made more of an impact when you waited for someone in their home if it was dark. 

The door opened, and the lights in the apartment flipped on as the young Dr. Fell closed and then locked the door behind her. Her coat was halfway off one of her shoulders before she spotted me sitting in her kitchen. She jumped with a rather large gasp, but I stayed casual with my feet propped up on her table, and my eyes never left the tip of the dagger I had against the table's surface. Each carefully controlled spin dug into the wood a little deeper. I didn’t want to destroy the furniture beyond repair, but a little reminder of this conversation would be good. “What are you doing in here?!”

“We need to talk.”

Shrugging her coat back into place, she went for the phone in her pocket, saying, “I’m calling the police. This completely unacceptable.”

She didn’t make it to the council meetings very often because of her busy work schedule, so I didn’t know her well, but her response told me quite a bit about her. No screaming or immediate running. She wasn’t easily intimidated. She probably was a good doctor, because she was calm under pressure. Let’s see how she handled this. 

Without looking away from the small hole I’d carved into her table, I waited for her to see that her call wouldn’t connect before saying, “I love gadgets. They help give me an edge when it comes to hunting the things I do. Take this jammer for instance.” Lifting my hand that'd been in my lap, I showed her the device in it. “It is the 21st century. Vampires use cell phones too.” She looked to the side, and I added, “Yeah, I also cut the phone line, but I’ll pay to have it fixed when we’re done . . . Sit. We’ll chat, and I’ll go.”

Finally, she turned to run towards the exit, something I’d anticipated she’d do before now if I was being honest. I threw the dagger in my hand, and it landed in the door inches from her head. She stopped without turning around, and I said, “Do you want to find out how many more of those I have, or do you want to maybe try this again?” Her shoulders fell, and she turned to look at me. Still no screaming. No crying or pleading. Definitely calm under pressure. I nodded towards the chair across from me. “Sit.” This time she came back to the table to take me up on it. 

Removing my feet from her table, I swiveled around in my chair to face her and crossed my arms on the table while I waited for her to get somewhat comfortable. “Do you like being a doctor, Meredith?”

“That’s what you broke into my house to ask?”

“Well, I never asked you during the Council meetings, but do you? It must be pretty great to save people without having all the ethical concerns I have when I do it . . . I mean, I know not all medical schools make you take the Hippocratic oath, or they use something else entirely, but it is widely believed by those of us in the non-medical sphere that y’all agree to ‘Do no harm,’ and I think most of you try to live by that.” 

Her brow furrowed in contrition. “I’m sorry about Elena, but she had a – “

“Brain hemorrhage . . . I know. I’m not conflicted by the treatment.” She relaxed. “But I am concerned about your disregard for informed consent. If a patient is in too bad of a state for them to give it, then you have got to tell them what you did when they wake up, so they can take proper precautions. Now my sister is a vampire, and I’m left wondering if that could’ve been prevented if you’d only just told her what you did. Would she have made different choices? Would the people around her have made different choices? I think the answer to both is yes, and yet there is no turning back the clock, so I have no choice but to accept what she is and keep you from doing this to anyone ever again.”

It was with a sad look that she said, “Eve . . . Please, don’t do this,” and I knew she didn’t think I was going to hurt her, because it wasn’t the kind of begging someone did when they were doing it for their life. I’d told Alec what she was doing, and either Alec had asked Jeremy about it when he thought it was Jeremy, but it’d really been his Dad, or his Dad had gotten Alec’s memories after Alec died. Either way, his Dad had followed up on it when he got his son’s body by ratting her out to the rest of the Council. She thought I was here to carry out their plan to have her medical license revoked, which is precisely what I wanted her to think. 

Taking a piece of folded paper out of my pocket, I placed it on the table, but left my index finger on it to hold it down as I said, “This is the letter the rest of the Council drew up to send to the medical board, and now they’re all dead . . . Did you do it?”

“What?! How could you think that? No! I would never – “ 

She hadn’t gone for me or tried to snatch the letter away, so not a violent first reaction. That didn't mean she wasn't smart enough to kill from a distance with something, like an explosion made to look like an accident, and she hadn't been working that day, so she could've gone to the Council to try and plead her case before just blowing them all up, but I didn’t sense any deceit in her immediate response. Of course, she could be a psychopath, but I'd never gotten that impression either, quite the opposite actually. Sitting back, I flicked the paper over to her. “Yeah, I didn’t think so, but I had to ask.” 

Quickly opening the letter, her eyes scanned it before she looked up at me in annoyance. “This just says, ‘All work and no play makes Meredith a bad doctor,’ over and over again . . . in pencil.”

I smirked. “Well, I didn’t have a crayon . . . I wonder where the real letter might be.” 

“Let me guess. You have it.”

“I might. I might not. Of course, I am still part of the Council even though there’s not much of it left, so I could always write up a new one. I’m sure that with the Sheriff and Mayor’s signatures, it would have more weight than even the last letter had . . . And we’re back to my original question. Do you like being a doctor?” She slumped and mumbled her answer. “Do you want to try that again?”

“Yes!”

“Yes, you want to try it again, or – “

“Yes, I like being a doctor!”

“Why?”

Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked off to the side. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I like helping people.”

Tapping my fingers lightly on the table, I watched her and finally said, “That’s what I thought.” She was from one of the wealthiest families in town, and yet she was renting this place. She didn’t own it, which meant she was probably paying off medical school loans and supporting herself instead of letting her family pay for it all. She also could’ve made more money if she’d gone to a city instead of staying in tiny little Mystic Falls. She wasn’t in it for the prestige or money. She did it because she cared. Definitely not a psychopath. 

When she looked at me I added, “You can use vampire blood if you can find it, but you’re not getting it from the vampires in this town again, and you will only give it to your patients if they are told what they were given and are fully informed about the side effects. If you don’t want to lose your license for being mentally unfit to practice, I suggest you keep it to people who already know that vampires exist. If you don’t know who those people are, I’ll give you a list. You’ll also inform me every time you do it and let me know who the person is, so I can protect them until it’s out of their system.” 

Of the people in town who knew about vampires, there weren’t more than a few who would be willing to accept vampire blood treatments, so that would cut down her client base, and she could try to get blood off of a vampire outside of Mystic Falls, but it wouldn’t be easy for her to find one. She wasn't a hunter, and going to Damon for it had been risky enough for her to do, but he'd been preoccupied with trying to find me when I'd been hurt. Any other time or any other vampire, and she'd probably be dead. She wouldn't take on that kind of risk with any vampires out of town, so if that's the only way she could get vampire blood, then it should get rid of her supply. I was effectively shutting her down, but still allowing her to keep her crutch if she thought she needed it, and if she used it, then I wasn’t going to let that person turn. 

This was how I planned to keep her from doing this to anyone ever again. It wasn’t a request or negotiation. This is how it was going to be, and that was clear in my tone. She gave me a hesitant nod that turned a little more emphatic, and I relaxed. “Good . . . now on to our next order of business. I think this one might actually interest you.” 

Just by saying that, and in a way that made it seem like this was a Council meeting between two of the 5 remaining members, I caught her attention. “What is it?”

“I’ve been infected with a curse.”

She sat forward to get a better look at me. “I was wondering if you were going to tell me what’s wrong with you.”

“Oh, there are a lot of things wrong with me, but this is the only one that’s obvious.” She smiled, and I said, “The cause is 100% supernatural, but all the witches I know are either MIA, untrustworthy, or have lost their powers for the time being. In their absence, I need to know as much as possible about my physical condition, so I can understand it and try to counteract it on my own. I need you to run some tests, but it needs to be completely off the books.”

“What kind of tests were you thinking?”

“Temperature check, heart rate, breathing, eye sight, blood work, that kind of thing?”

“So just a standard work up?”

“I feel like it’s going to be anything but standard, but yeah.”

“Okay . . . okay. Let me see what I have.” 

She got up and bustled around her place before coming back with an armful of items. “What, no doctor’s bag?”

Finding an old school thermometer in her supplies, she retorted, “Most of us don’t exactly make house calls anymore.”

“Then why do you have syringes and vials?” 

She took a step in my direction saying, “Because I live in Mystic Falls where I like to be prepared,” and after she’d swabbed the end of the thermometer with disinfectant, I put my hand out saying, “I’ll take it. You shouldn’t get too close.”

She handed it to me and waited until I stuck it under my tongue before asking, “Is it contagious?”

I shook my head. Taking my finger, I made a slicing motion across my neck to explain.

“You think it’ll kill me?” I nodded. “I’m sure that’s not – “ 

Putting my hands up and crossing my forefingers as a signal to ward her off, I nodded. She needed to keep away. When the time was up, she told me to check my temperature, and I did. “That’s weird.”

“What?”

“It’s normal.”

“And that’s weird because?” 

If she had one of those laser thermometers that measured surface temperature, I was sure it’d be different. I looked around to find something I could use to show her what I meant and kept an eye on her to make sure she wouldn’t attack me while I went to the sink. Grabbing a glass, I filled it with warm water, brought it back to the table, and dropped the thermometer into it. I waited for it to get to the accurate temperature reading, and then said, “Watch this,” as I dipped the tip of my pinky into the water. She seemed dubious until the temperature reading started to rapidly drop. I could only handle it for about 10 seconds before needing to take my finger back, and she grabbed the thermometer to see if it really said what she thought it did. 

“It dropped by 20 degrees in - ”

“10 seconds? Yeah, and look at this.” I lifted my hand, so she could see my finger, and it was red and raw, like it was starting to blister. She reached for it, so she could take a closer look, and I pulled my hand back. “Yes, it’s a heat blister. Showers on the coldest setting feel warm to me now, and I can’t take a cold bath, or the water starts to freeze. I don’t actually freeze anything other than water, but I do know that the air around me gets colder too.” My only explanation was that the 9th circle had been a lake of ice, so the curse thought it should react to water out here in the real world by freezing it too.

Looking back at the thermometer, she shook her head. “That’s not possible.”

“Said the doctor who uses vampire blood to heal her critical patients.” When she looked up at me, I added, “So what do you think?”

Moving around to her supplies, she seemed a bit more lively. “Let me get some blood. I’ll take it to the lab tomorrow. Any other symptoms other than the anemic color?”

“Uh . . . I cry black tears, the sun makes me feel sick, and if I do vomit, it is black . . . and other than that, I feel fine. My reflexes are perfect. I think my night vision might be a little better too.”

She stopped to look at me. “That’s why you wanted me to do an eye test. Why do you think that’s different?”

“I don’t know. I’m kind of working it out as I go. I think that when I was dead, I imagined myself as having no eyes, so maybe now my eyes are more sensitive to less light in the dark?”

She didn’t know what to make of that. It was obvious, but she’d roll with it for now. Looking down at her supplies again, she asked, “Do you think you could get me some samples of those tears?” 

“Yeah, sure. Let me think of something sad really quick.” She paused, and I laughed when she looked back up at me. “I might have an easier time working up some vomit for you.”

I’d meant it as a joke, but as she came back around the table with a syringe, she said, “If you could, that’d be good, but both would be better.” 

Before she got too close, I took a step back and held out my hand. “Just talk me through it. I’ll do it myself, and I don’t know about the blood, but I don’t get a good feeling about the black stuff, so you should treat it as a high level bio-hazard.” 

“Point taken.” Handing over an alcohol swab and a thick rubber band, she said, “You’re going to want to roll up your sleeve. Put the rubber band around your upper arm and use this pen to make it tight, swab the skin in the crook of your elbow, and we’ll take it from there.” 

Before I even got here, I’d been pretty sure that she did what she did, because she was trying to help people, and I could relate. I was glad I hadn’t gone too over the top at the start. I hadn’t gone easy on her either. I’d needed to make a point about the vampire blood and find out if she blew up the rest of the council. I'd also needed to keep her from running away from me, because I couldn't touch her to stop her, and I couldn't let her think that her fighting me would be a good idea, because again, I couldn't touch her. Other than intimidation, I'd had no good ways of doing all that. Liz was still going to kill me if she found out about it though.


	10. Death of the Endless

As a member of what remained of the Council, I’d volunteered to be a greeter at the door, a role that Liz and Carol hadn’t even thought was necessary, because it wasn’t a wedding, and I wasn’t with the mortuary, but I wasn’t inside the door. I was outside, and I wasn’t exactly greeting people. Damon was to my right and closer to the door, so he could get any hands that came my way. We hadn’t had anybody yet, but they’d have to start showing up sometime. I’d made sure we got here hours early for recon, and I’d blocked the back door to keep anyone from being able to use it, so I would know the face of everyone in there even if I didn’t know most people. 

“Shit.” 

On high alert, Damon asked, “What?” as I closed my umbrella and ducked behind him. 

“My history teacher is coming this way.” She must be here to help set up. We were still at least two hours from the service. I saw him try to stifle his laughter, and bit my tongue as he made a show of saying ‘hi’ to her. After she'd gone into the church, I stepped out from behind him to retake my place and popped my umbrella back open. He finally lost it, so I looked up at him with a snappy, “It’s not funny.”

"To think that all your scheming against your newest nemesis has been thrown into turmoil because you’re suddenly reminded that you haven’t been to school in how many weeks now? Yeah it is.” I would’ve grumpily responded to that, but he seemed genuinely happy, and I didn’t want to ruin that. It really was a travesty that he’d had so few of those kinds of moments in his long life. His eyes scanned my face, and by the time they made their way back up to my mine, they’d lost some of their humor but didn’t appear any less content. “We should probably talk about when you’re going to go back.”

“I said I would.”

“Yeah, but at the rate you’re going, you’re going have to graduate with Jeremy.”

“Everyone else has missed loads of school too.”

“You started off strong, but now I think you’re starting to rack up more absences than the others combined.”

“Ah, but they’re not unexcused absences. They’ve been for legitimate health concerns.”

“Signed for by what doctor?”

He had a point. “I’ll ask Meredith to do it.”

“Didn’t you throw a knife at her head?”

“She’s past that.”

“Then I suppose you could go to her . . . if you don’t mind adding more to the tab of things you’re already coercing her into doing by holding a non-existent letter over her.”

“It’s not coercion if she wants to help.”

“Sure, keep telling yourself that.” 

Flicking my hand in his direction, I glibly said, “If you find it so morally ambiguous, then you can fix it,” and his eyebrows rose.

“I would, but somebody convinced me that we should put vervain in the town’s water supply.”

“Well, that seems incredibly short sighted now.”

He came close to laughing again, but now that the game had begun, it would appear he wasn’t going down without a fight. “Yeah it does . . . especially since I was told that I could use it to turn a fire hose on the Original family and that has yet to happen.”

“Mm . . . well, since the recently deceased wasted a whole lot of vervain, there won't be much left for the water supply soon. We could wait, and then you could fix it.”

Whatever his response to that was going to be, he didn’t get to it. His posture changed, and his expression darkened as he looked over my head. I turned in time to see Elena storming up to us from around the side of the church. I’d seen her arrive so she could help set up for the funeral, but I hadn’t thought she saw me. It would appear that she had and judging by where she was looking, I was her target. Ducking down, so only I could hear, he asked, “You got this?”

He knew he’d annoyed me the last couple of times I’d seen them interact, and he must not think he could control himself this time either, because it sounded like he was willing to bow out before she got here. “Yeah, I’m not the one who really has a problem with her.”

“But she does have a tendency to push your buttons more than anyone else, and it’s the first time you’ve been out in public during the day. The last thing we need right now is for you to start puking Hell lake water all over the church in front of the whole town.”

Hence the reason he was bowing out, right? Another benefit to the curse. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want those evil twin nicknames to resurface.” He didn’t look like he found that particularly funny given the circumstances. “I’ll be fine. If I start to feel sick, I’ll hide in a darkened room until I feel better.”

“No. I want you to come find me, and I’ll get you out of here.” 

“I’ll consider it.”

“Eve.”

“Yes, Damon?”

At the innocence in my voice, the corners of his mouth turned up, and he rolled his eyes. “I know with the new hunter in town, you want to get a look and think this is where he’ll be, but – “

“I’ll be fine. I promise that I will live to fight with you about this another day.” Giving him a little shove, I added, “Go. You two fighting is more likely to turn me into Regan MacNeil.” 

He reluctantly stepped away from me to give us some space, and then steered his path past Elena, so he could tell her that whatever the problem was, she needed to go easy on me. My focus shifted to her, and she stopped, forced herself to take a breath, and then approached in a more relaxed gait. “Care to explain why the back door was barricaded?”

That’s what she was upset about? “Not really.”

“Try.” 

I noted her relatively passive demeanor and took a step back. Either she was really attempting to keep this civil no matter how far I pushed her, so I wouldn’t turn into a fountain of Hell sludge, or an attack was imminent. “Uh . . .”

“Are you planning to turn the church into a war zone?”

“Not planning to, no.”

Stepping closer, she whispered, “They may have annoyed you at the meetings, but I grew up knowing these people my entire life, and this is their funeral. Show some respect.”

Okay, was she mad at me or not? Calm on the outside, but her words and cadence sure sounded like she wanted to be mad at me. “Tell that to the guy I’m trying to catch.”

Her hand shook a little as she brought it to her forehead, and she took another calming breath. “Eve, you’re not listening. You can’t just start a fight in the middle of the church. Not today. And you can’t go around barricading doors like that either. It's a safety hazard. What if there’s an emergency and people can’t get out of one of only two exits?”

If this guy started shooting, then it’d pandemonium. “Okay, second point taken.”

“Really?”

I smiled at her surprise. “Yeah, but I won’t be starting anything, and if the reason you came from around the side is because you removed the blockade, then you’re going to have to put it back until he arrives. Then it can be removed. I don’t want this guy slipping past me by going in the back.”

“I don’t even understand why you have to confront this guy at all.”

“Consider me your protection detail.”

“I don’t need – “

“Not just you . . . all of you.”

“Eve, he isn’t like you. He sounds like the kind of hunter you were always telling me about.”

I didn’t know what kind of hunter this was. I’d been there when Stefan pulled the bullets out of Tyler’s torso and was able to question Tyler about him. The things I knew about hunting didn’t add up to how this guy sounded. “He’s worse.”

“What?”

“Elena, he walked into Tyler’s house and shot him without caring that he was doing it in front of a civilian, let alone the Mayor. He doesn’t hunt in the shadows. I’m willing to bet that he hunts in broad daylight, and I’ve never heard of a vampire hunter who does that. Killing vampires, who look like people, in front of normal people is just not something that is done, but he does it, and he’s managed to keep himself from being locked up in jail or a psych ward. He is confident he won’t get caught for a reason, and right now, he’s on a fishing expedition." 

"He didn’t go to the Lockwood’s because he knew what Tyler was. He’s testing the waters with everyone he meets by shaking their hand wearing vervain laced gloves, and I guarantee that he won’t stop now that he’s identified Tyler, because a guy like that wouldn’t go anywhere for just one vampire. He knows there’s more than one in town, but he doesn’t know who they are. My guess is that him being here has something to do with the people we’re having a funeral for today, and now he doesn’t know who he is supposed to hunt. He will make a move today to try and identify more of you, and he won’t care if the whole town sees it. That is some next level shit.” 

“You really shouldn’t use words like that here, and even if you’re right about him, it doesn’t mean you should’ve come here. What about the sun?” Looking up at my black umbrella, she said, “Does that really work?”

“It seems to be.”

“But right now you look more like a vampire than anyone else.” I smiled, and she shook her head. “And that’s exactly what you want him to think.”

Before I could respond, I heard my name, and looking over her shoulder, I saw Jeremy coming our way. Caroline and Tyler were with him, and I found myself trying to determine where I’d put Jeremy on my trust list. It’s something I’d been doing with everyone since I came back. Caroline? I trusted her on a myriad of different things. That’s why I’d put her at a tier just below Damon and Alec.

She’d kept me a secret before the Sun and Moon Ritual and keeping secrets was hard for her to do. She and I trained together, half on teaching her how to defend herself and half on cheerleading. There was a lot of trust involved in that. I could trust her with fashion advice, but even more importantly, I could trust that if I wasn’t able to defend myself, she would. It could be something as mundane as arguing with Bonnie and Elena unless she thought I was genuinely in the wrong, or it could be something more important, like killing me to bring me back with my ring. 

I had a life outside of her, and she had a life outside of me, but I could rely on her. Maybe I should bump her up to a higher category . . . on the other hand, I wasn’t sure we’d get through Hell together. I’d definitely annoy her. Even if I was blind, she’d still leave me behind until she felt bad and came back for me, and there was no doubt in my mind that it’d happen more than once. She should stay where she was.

Tyler landed just below Caroline. He’d broken every bone in his body to help me with Caroline’s Dad. He stepped up and helped Bonnie save Klaus’s entire line of vampires by letting Klaus use his body when Klaus’s own body died. He hadn’t been vengeful about me killing his uncle or Jules’s pack, and when I was having trouble with other people at the start of school, he hadn’t joined in with them at all. He’d also played whatever part was needed the night Alec died, so he was pretty reliable. We just weren’t particularly close, so I wouldn’t really go to him for anything.

What about Jeremy? In all honesty, I didn’t really trust him that much. He was an erratic teenage boy who didn’t listen to anyone. He stowed away in my car to go on a hunt, and he hadn’t really listened to me very well the entire time, which is why I’d had to have Alec be his babysitter. On the other hand, he gave me chance despite his sister and the girlfriend he’d had at the time both hating me, and he’d been willing to help me spy on Imelda when Elena dropped the ball on it. 

He might be erratic and prone to throwing hissy fits when he didn’t get his way, but maybe I’d put him with Stefan at just above Elena. I’d put Klaus and Katherine above those three. At least I could trust Klaus and Katherine to be Klaus and Katherine. Imelda wasn’t herself, so I had no idea who she was anymore, and I didn’t trust Bonnie much at all, so those two weren’t on the list right now. Oddly enough, I’d probably put Alice and Matt above Klaus and Katherine. 

Alice may have allowed Klaus to be killed when she saw the chance do it, but she'd gone through a lot to get me there. That hadn't been to kill Klaus, because she would've saved him if the opportunity not to do it hadn't presented itself. She'd gotten me there even though she disagreed with it, because it's what I'd wanted, and she didn't just leave after it was over even though she could have with me being hurt and blind or should have when I was horrible to her. 

With Matt, I’d really only spoken to him a handful of times, but he’d let me stay with him, kept me being at his house a secret when I needed to mount a surprise attack on Klaus, and he’d let me know when the others were going to kill Finn, so I could at least have a shot at keeping them from killing off the entire vampire race. He was reliable too as long you hit the right emotional notes with him, but he and Alice didn’t come anywhere close to Caroline and Tyler, so there was a big gap between the top three tiers and the rest.

As Jeremy approached, he seemed uncharacteristically chipper. When he got close enough to say it without yelling, it became more apparent why. “I didn’t know you were a fan of comics.” 

It looked like I’d been caught. Contrary to what Elena thought, I wasn’t actually playing bait as a vampire for the vampire hunter. I smiled, and Tyler said, “You actually make a pretty awesome Death of the Endless,” as he and Caroline went past us into the church. I watched them go and wondered what that was about. She hadn’t really talked to me when they’d come to the house for help with Tyler’s wounds. I strongly suspected that it had less to do with me being cursed and more to do with me telling her mother that she was probably going to die the night Klaus did. I’d have to get it out of her later. 

Masking my uncertainty at Caroline’s behavior, I briefly looked down at my black boots, black jeans, black studded belt, black tank top, black fingerless gloves, and silver ankh necklace before directing my attention back onto Jeremy. “Might as well use this look while I have it. I didn’t think anyone would get what I was going for with it.”

Jeremy grinned. “Yeah, well not everyone is as cool as us . . . Think you’re missing the Eye of Horace though.”

“I’m amusing myself by playing Death, but I didn’t want to be too on the nose with it. This is an actual funeral service.” 

“So, what are you doing here?”

“I - ”

Elena answered for me. “She knew these people. She was on the Council with them.”

True and yet not. For someone who hated it when other people lied to her, she sure was good at lying herself. I take it she didn’t want him getting involved. “Yeah, but I thought she couldn’t - “ He looked from Elena, up to my umbrella, and then back at me. “That reminds me. I need to talk to you.”

He went to touch my upper arm or possibly to grab it, so he could direct me somewhere away from his sister, and her hand shot out to stop him with pretty impressive vampire speed. “We talked about this, Jer. You need to be careful around her now.” She wasn’t wrong about that, so I wasn’t going to say anything, but then she looked at me and said, “And you shouldn’t be wearing something so dangerous.”

It wasn’t the tone that got to me. It’s what she’d said. “Well, that’s a new one.”

“I’m serious, Eve. You’re showing way too much skin.”

I’d let her trying to correct my language go, but now I felt the first pangs of nausea starting to bubble up in the pit of my stomach. “I can wear what I like, and usually what I like is like 3 layers thick. I’m just having some fun with – “

Leaning closer, she hissed, “It’s a funeral. It’s not supposed to be fun. Go home or find a jacket to wear before you hurt someone.”

My hand flattened over my stomach, and I inhaled deeply through my nose. Wow, how sick that made me feel had come on pretty fast and was really over nothing. Taking Elena by the shoulders, so she’d focus on him, Jeremy turned her away from me, saying, “Hey, it’s okay . . . It was my fault. I forgot.“

“You can’t forget even for a second, Jeremy.”

“I know, and I know you’re worried. I just need to talk to her, okay?”

Before she could respond, I caught someone moving towards the door in my peripheral vision, and something about him made me quickly side-step out of my current conversation and directly into his path. I’d never seen the guy before in my life, but I’d made Tyler give me a thorough description. It’d been pretty accurate, except this guy was huge. He was here early for recon too, but I’d beat him to it. Plastering a grin on my face, I looked up at him. “Greetings and salutations. Were any of the departed family?”

“No . . . No, I’m here investigating the explosion.”

“Mm.” Giving him a nod, I said, “Well, we’re expecting a full house, and I’m not sure that there is room for someone who wasn’t a friend or family, particularly if that person is only here to cause trouble by doing an investigation on the worst day of some of these people’s lives.”

His head tilted as he appraised me. “Understood.” Sticking his hand out in my direction, he added, “Connor Jordan, I’d really just like show my respects for the deceased. It’s been a deeply troubling case.”

I looked down at his hand, and it was tempting, because it might put an end to this right here and now, but there was right, and there was wrong, and it would be wrong to intentionally send him anywhere like where I’d been. However, if he wanted a fight, then Elena was right, I was baring more skin than usual, and what happened to him if there was skin-on-skin contact during said fight wouldn’t be my fault. Okay, it would, because I’d made it easier for him to touch me, but if all else failed with an out of the norm hunter, then I had to use every weapon at my disposal. I just wouldn’t be using this weapon as a first resort. Putting my hand that wasn’t holding the umbrella behind my back, I directed my attention back up to him and countered, “Eve Gilbert, and I don’t shake hands.” 

“There a reason for that?”

And now to hit him with my naïve teenage persona. “For one, I’ve always found it a bit strange . . . I mean, you don’t shake the hands of people you know really well, do you? That means that you’re essentially giving your hand to someone you don’t know. It seems like a lot of trust to give a stranger. Second of all, I was taught that the proper etiquette for a handshake between a man and a woman is for the woman to offer her hand, and only then should the handshake happen, but as a woman, you really have to be quite selective . . . can’t go around shaking everyone’s hand. Oh, would you look at that. We’re wearing similar gloves. Settle for a fist bump?”

“Eve!” 

_I know you didn’t meant to do it, but nicely done, Elena._ With an overly exasperated sigh, I looked at Elena before looking back up at the hunter. “See. My sister was taught the same rules of etiquette, and she’s more of a stickler for them than I am. I wouldn’t be expecting any handshakes out of her either.”

By this point, Connor mostly looked like he’d do just about anything to get away from the brat at the door, and that worked for me. I’d never wanted to start a fight with him then and there, particularly out in the open. For one, it’d mean dropping my umbrella. Two, that’s not how I did things. I was more of a cloak and dagger, fan of the shadows kind of girl, and three, that just hadn’t been part of the plan. The plan had been to drawn him in and disarm him without him realizing it, and I was sure I had just bought myself a second or two of hesitation time in the event of a confrontation, which meant that phase one of my plan had been accomplished. 

Find out if he was here. Check. Find out if he knew who the vampires in town were, or if he was still fishing for them. Check. Subvert myself as a threat. Check. Added bonus of getting him not to expect Elena to shake his hand. Unplanned check. Now, I was on to phase two. He could go. Stepping out of his way, I added, “Anyway, I suppose I should let you pass. Who am I to deny you an audience with the dead?”

He did a double take of me as he took a step towards the door, and when he committed to going inside, I stopped him again. “And Connor?” He turned to look back at me, and I said, “Make sure you sign the book. What’s left of the town council would like to keep a record of everyone here today for the town archives.”

As soon as he was out of range, I turned back to Elena. The back of her hand was flying towards my upper arm, and I looked down at the place where she would connect, but she stopped like a centimeter away from it before dropping her hand. “What was that?!”

“Good question . . . Were you going to hit me or not?”

She looked down at my arm and then quickly back up at me. “I . . . um . . . I’m a lot stronger now, so I’m thinking I shouldn’t hit you.” 

My eyes narrowed, while I studied her. “Stop trying to make up for the fact that you killed me . . . Although, now that you’re a raging, She-Hulk, you should know that if you continue doing something that you got way too comfortable doing as a human, then I’m going to start hitting back, so . . . maybe it’s for the best.”

“I . . . have no idea what that means.”

“You were always hitting me or shoving me to – “

“I never – “

“test me and see how I’d react.”

“What? I didn’t do that.”

She genuinely didn’t seem to know what I was talking about right now, but I remained undeterred. “I never thought you were doing it consciously, but I was pretty sure that subconsciously you were testing me to see how far you could push me without me retaliating.”

“I don’t think I ever – “

Quickly listing them off on my fingers, I said, “You slapped me at Dad’s funeral. You threw your drink my face during our birthday party. You were always shoving me in the shoulder any time you lost your temper. You violently stole my comforter once when – “

She cracked a smile and started laughing. “I wouldn’t say I violently stole your comforter. I was trying to wake you up.”

Jeremy chimed in with a grin, “Yeah, she used to do that to me too before I got bigger than her.”

So it was a normal sibling thing? I glanced from him to her. “Well, it felt pretty violent to me. I was dead asleep. You’re lucky I didn’t stake you.”

She exhaled another laugh before saying, “But you didn’t.”

Jeremy interjected again, but this time, he was talking about me. “She said the same thing to me when she found me in her trunk.”

Elena looked up at him with a sigh. “She did give you a black eye though.”

“Yeah, it was just about the only cool thing that happened to me on that hunt. I don’t even remember going into that house.”

Right. Because that’s the first time Alec’s Dad took control of his body? The mood around us fell, and as the guilt for that fed into the simmering that’d started to die down in my stomach, I muttered, “Way to ruin probably the first and last moment the three of us are ever going to have, Jeremy.” Before he could get offended or Elena could get annoyed, I said, “We need all the vampires to sit or stand at the back . . . can you two spread the word?”

They both asked, “Why?” and I guess I should’ve expected both of them to need an explanation instead of just doing what I’d said, but it still annoyed me, and I felt immediately worse. God, this was annoying. No doubt about it. With as annoyed and angry as I got on such a regular basis, the 5th circle is where I would’ve eventually ended up if that damn die had been able to claim my soul. 

“Because whatever he’s going to do, he’s going to do it from the balcony. It’ll give him the best view of everyone in the church. He’ll set some kind of trap, and the second he sees it’s sprung, he’ll react, but he can’t react to anything if he doesn’t see that the trap’s been sprung. If you’re under the balcony or at an angle where he doesn’t have a clear line of sight near the back, then he won’t be able to see you. Ipso facto, that’ll be the safest place for all of you to be if you all insist on staying for the service . . . So, if you could get to making sure everyone goes there, that’d be great.”

Putting her hand on my shoulder, Elena stepped forward. “Hey, are you okay?”

It annoyed me more. Wrapping my arms around my mid-section, I shrugged her off and turned away from her. “No . . . could you just do what I asked? Please.”

“Is it the sun?”

I glanced back at her. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“I’ll go find, Damon.”

“What? No . . . It’s not the sun. I just want you to do what I said.” Looking at Jeremy, I added, “Both of you.” He’d just had to go and bring up what happened to him. I mostly felt guilt, guilt, and more guilt about that. I’d failed him, and I failed Alec on so many levels it was pathetic. Instead of doing what I said, something that would make me feel marginally better, Elena wouldn’t stop looking at me with those concerned eyes of hers, so stepping up to her, I spat out, “Take your stupid face and – Ah!” 

I doubled over in pain, and she grabbed my arm. Dragging me into the church, she looked back at Jeremy, asked him to let the others know what I’d said, and didn’t stop on her long and winding path until she’d shoved me into some room in the basement. I looked down at my black umbrella and saw the state it was in after she’d plowed us through multiple doorways without giving me a chance to close it. “Look at what you did to my umbrella!” I threw it at her and immediately fell to my knees. The pain in my stomach brought tears to my eyes, but I refused to get sick. I didn't think it'd make this pain go away, and I might not be able to stop. Whatever evil was inside of me needed to stay there. 

Crouching down, she tried to get a better look at me, and I curled into myself more. “Eve, I need you to let me see.”

“No . . . just leave me alone!”

She put her hand on my shoulder again. “Let me help.”

“If you want to help, then leave me alone!!” 

I looked up at her to try and make her listen, and she gasped. Grabbing some tissue paper, she started wiping my cheeks, and I slapped her hand away from me. “You’ve got black tears streaming down your face.”

“So what? It’s a funeral. People will think it’s my mascara.”

“Eve, you’re eyes are black.”

“Yeah, well I’ve got tears in them, and I’m trying not to lose any . . . if you’d just listen – “

She got to her feet saying, “I’m going to get Damon . . . that’s what he said, right? He wanted you to come find him if - ,”

Had she been eavesdropping?! I slapped the ground in frustration. “I said, no!” 

Yeah, really wish I hadn’t done that. Touching my forehead to the ground, I choked in a sobbing breath, and she was gone. If guilt was bad, and the sun was worse, outright anger was the worst. It was really painful, and the pain only fueled the anger more, which made it hurt more. I was struggling to breathe in anything other than short pained gasps when the door opened, and I heard it lock. “Eve?”

Sounding pretty pathetic, I weakly answered, “I’m not in any position to stop you right now, but don’t make me go home.” 

Kneeling in front of me, Damon murmured, “I’ll do anything you want . . . just let me see you, okay?”

“You really mean that?”

“Come on, don’t make me have to pick you up. That’s only going to make it worse.”

“That’s not a yes.”

“Yes! I meant it.”

I put my hands under me and pushed up. When I lifted my head, his hand came up to cup the side of my face. I wanted to crack a joke about being a Hell beast. I wanted to tell him that I’d lost control over nothing. I wanted to say I’d be fine. All I could manage was, ”Damon, it hurts,” and his mouth collided with mine. We stayed like that, frozen, and then he brought his other hand up to cradle my face as his lips began to gently caress mine. I knew what he was trying to do. I could’ve argued against it, because getting sick on him right now would go up there as one of the worst moments of my life, but I mostly wanted him to be right, so the pain would stop. 

I leaned into him, and one of his hands slid down my back, so he could wrap an arm around me and pull me closer. His tongue found mine, and my body melted against his. My breathing righted itself, and the internal turbulence began to subside. I started to think I’d be okay, but I didn’t want to give up the light and warmth he made feel after the darkness I’d just felt. He must’ve known I was better when he heard my soft hum of gratitude, but he didn’t want to stop either. Instead, his hands made their way to the back of my thighs, and he picked me up. My legs wrapped around his waist, and he carried me to the nearest counter top.

It was at the perfect height not to disrupt our flow. Pulling me flush against him, he rocked into me, and a soft gasp left my lips as heat flooded through my veins. It was unexpected, not unwelcome. Holding me in place as he ground into me again, he established a rhythm, and just like when we danced, I followed his lead. Reaching my hand back behind me, I braced myself against the wall and met him halfway the next time. He moaned in approval before he broke the kiss to go to my neck. His lips found my pulse point, and I started panting a much different kind of breath than I had a few minutes ago. 

He made his way to my collarbone, and I wanted him back up here with me, so I brought my hand up to his jaw to let him know that. It’s all the prompting he needed. His mouth crashed back over mine, and the kiss intensified. When he did pull back to look down at me, he looked as dazed as I felt. His harsh breaths mingled with mine, and I knew what he was asking even though all he got out was, “Eve?” 

I loved him, and I was sure he loved me. I’d always questioned it because of the physical similarities between my predecessors and me, and maybe at first, that’s what’d drawn him to me. You could say he had a type, a very specific one, but how he felt about me had snuck up on him as much as how I felt about him had on me. That made it feel more real. There was more here, more depth in the experiences we’d had together, more friendship, more understanding, just more, and when he’d had a legitimate chance with Elena, he hadn’t taken it, but I hadn’t really noticed any of those things before I died. It took dying for me to believe it, the night it’d happened, his reaction to it, and how he still harbored resentment towards Elena for it, so yeah, I was sure he loved me, and he wouldn’t stray from that. There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted us to keep going. “Yes.” 

His lips touched mine briefly before he murmured, “I have so much to show you . . . and as much as I want you right here, right now . . . I think we can do better than this for your first time.”

Threading my fingers through his hair, I licked my lips and looked around us. "We do appear to be in a bathroom."

"At a funeral."

With one last look at our surroundings, I looked back up at him and shrugged. “I don’t know . . . it actually sounds kind of perfect, doesn’t it? I’m not exactly a rose petals on the bed kind of girl, and you’re no choir boy.”

He chuckled on his way back down to me, and a minute later, I felt him relax as his internal battle faded. “Okay . . . just tell me this is what you really want, and – “

“I do.” 

Yeah, that’s what he’d wanted to hear, because I was handsomely rewarded for it as the shackles came off and the heat behind his kiss came back in full force. When the door handle jiggled, I exhaled, “I. Don’t. Care,” between kisses, and he was more than happy to oblige. 

“Anyone in there?” 

The hunter? What was he doing snooping around here? Damon broke away and looked at the door as he whispered, “Is that him?”

He must’ve known because of a change in me. I put my hands on either side of his head and turned his face back down to me, because I didn’t want us getting sidetracked this time. His eyes flitted across my face, and there was something special behind it, like he was really seeing me and there was nothing outside of that. The door handle jiggled again, and I quickly glanced at it. “Fuck off, Connor.” The jiggling stopped.

“Is that Eve?”

Ooh . . . Damon did not like that he knew my name. He needed to go away now. “Yep, and it’s occupied.”

“Got any idea how long you’re gonna be?”

Well, I hadn’t had girl problems since Mom became a vampire and got some herbal concoction from a witch that stopped them completely, but guy’s seemed to shy away from that whole topic of conversation. “Girl problems, so who knows? If you’ve gotta go that bad, then go outside. You’re a guy aren’t ya?” 

Damon cracked a smile, and Connor tried again. “This is embarrassing, but – “

“Well, you’re not doing that here . . . in a house of God.”

I had to quickly slam my hand over Damon’s mouth as he started to laugh. He buried his head in my shoulder to stifle it further until a rather disappointed, “Well all right then,” came from the other side of the door. He could hear when Connor was really gone better than I could, so when he lifted his head, I knew we were in the clear. 

“Did that kill the mood?”

“Little bit.”

“Damn.”

He smirked. “I said a little bit, not completely. Let me take you home.”

I pointed at the door. “But – “

“Have you honestly thought about it even once since I came in here?” I shook my head, and he brushed my hair out of my face. “Then come home with me and don’t feel guilty about it. Jeremy got your message out. Every non-human will be at the back. You did what you came here to do.”

“I still don’t know what he’s going to use as his trap.”

“So? You were finally putting yourself first for a change. Don’t let him derail that.”

“I put myself first all the time. I do what I want, when I want, and - ”

“Yeah, so you can help other people.” Getting frustrated, he ducked down to try and rekindle what we’d had going before the interruption, so he could entice me back to the house. I knew that’s what he was doing, but he was pretty persistent, and I was more receptive to it than I’d started to think. It didn’t take long before my nerve endings were throbbing again, and I forgot that it was only temporary. “I change my mind.”

Noooo. Not again. “Really?”

Ducking down to brush his lips along my neck, he murmured, “Mm . . . I want you here.” He stopped to linger at my collar bone again, and I exhaled a breathy sigh. He smiled to himself before skimming up my jaw line. “It has to be here . . . They built it after the fire at – “ When he got close enough, I leaned up to kiss him and keep him from having to finish that, because I understood. The last church and the tombs under it had caused him a lot of pain, like Katherine. There was something symbolic about him being with me in a place they’d built to replace that one, and he was a sucker for the poetic.


	11. Sex and Violence

When you took someone’s life, it changed you. It would appear that having sex did not do that. One of the great mysteries I’d had about life had been answered. Now, I was on the other side of an invisible barrier that most people crossed at some point in their life, but I was still me. I wasn’t going to walk down the street thinking, ‘I had sex. That random person probably had sex. That gives us something in common,’ and feel like I was more connected to the world at large even if I did feel more connected to Damon in a way I couldn’t quite explain. 

I knew that sex didn’t have to be that way. I’d seen enough movies and read enough books to know that there were a lot of different reasons people had sex. There was procreation, not an issue here. There was fun or stress relief or addiction or to make yourself just feel good about yourself, but none of those are what’d just happened. Damon had been really good at being present and with me in every moment. He'd taken his time, learned what worked for me. A lot of the time, it was when I did, and he hadn’t rushed me beyond what I was comfortable doing at any step along the way. He’d kept me from feeling nervous even once during all of this – even when I’d bled a little.

I think we’d both forgotten it would happen until he started getting black veins under his eyes, but they weren’t there long enough for me to even tell him that he’d better not bite me, because the vervain in my blood made him feel a similar kind of stinging pain to the one he’d just caused me, and it was bye bye bloodlust. I’d thought it was funny. He really hadn’t, but as he focused more on alleviating the pain for both of us, we’d ended up on the same page again, and it’d been amazing. I definitely felt closer to him, not that I was going to tell him that. It’d only serve to make him think he could use it to get his way more often, but that wasn’t happening. I was fairly certain that I was fundamentally unchanged as a person. 

I’d just pulled my tank top back on when Damon came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. Watching me in the mirror, he asked if I was okay and relaxed when he saw me smile. “Yeah, are you?” 

In response, he tucked his face into the nape of my neck. His lips gliding over the skin gave me tingles, and to keep him in that particular spot, I reached back behind his head to hold him in place. One of his arms pulled me tight against him as the other slid up to tease around the underside of my breast. Closing my eyes, I melded into him, and his lips grazed their way up to behind my ear. It was intoxicating. “Are you really not going to stop me?”

Uh, yeah, I was still me, but I liked where this seemed to be going. “How much time do we have?” 

He committed more fully to my neck and got to my shoulder before he spoke again. “Does it matter?”

It really should. I looked over my shoulder at him, and he captured my lips. With his free hand, his caresses were dedicated and yet teasing at the same time, going just shy of giving me what I wanted. It wasn’t until his other hand slid its way to my abdomen and seemed content to trace along my skin just above my belt that I saw this as an opportunity. I exhaled, “New game?” and he murmured, “Best one so far.”

“Who wins?”

His hand trailed up my torso and dipped under the fabric of my bra. As his teasing gave way to more electric touches, I arched back against him, and his mouth dropped back down to my neck. “How about I try to get you to have sex with me in random places or at bad times. You do it, and you win. You don’t, and I win.”

“Mm . . . “ I'd been thinking something similar, but I had an issue with the bad times part of it. I didn't want him doing this when I was about to shoot someone . . . or run out the door if that's what I should be doing right now. It was a good 30 seconds before I was able to ask a shaky, “Bad times?”

“It’s the only way I’ll ever win.” Because I’d already shown a proclivity for random places? He added a soft, “It'd mean double points this time.”

He knew how competitive I was, so it was a good pitch. It was tempting, but we really should get rid of the bad timing, and how much time did we have anyway? “Because the timing is bad?”

“Definitely.”

Oh god. . . Rolling back against him, I whimpered softly. There was something so torturous about pleasure, a delicious kind of torture that he could give me every day, but I was beginning to see how him being so attentive might be a problem. He was going to use this against me every chance he got. What were we talking about again? Oh, right. Bad timing. I somehow managed to force myself to ask, “How bad?”

“Could be over by now.”

I knew that wasn't true. I breathed, “We got here early,” and he lost himself in circling his tongue around my pulse point before forcing himself to move away from the dangerous zone and closer to the nape. 

“You don’t know how much time you’ve let me have with you, do you?”

None whatsoever. “Tell me . . . don’t lie.”

“I can hear the organ . . . it’ll be starting soon.”

Had we really been in here for almost two hours? “Damon!” I felt him sigh before his arms slid back around my waist as his forehead met the back of my shoulder. Reaching back, I patted the back of his head and tried, “At least you won this time? 2 – 1.”

“Don’t really feel like I’m winning right now.”

“Well, I definitely feel like I’m losing.” His hug became more earnest. “There’s always home?”

Resting his chin on my shoulder, the corner of his mouth turned up as he countered, “Home is safe. It’s not part of the game.”

“Might be good for practice.”

He let me go with a grin, and I readjusted my clothing before combing my fingers through my hair to fix it. “I’m gonna say not tonight.” 

“Really?”

He went to the door saying, “You may not feel it right now, but I’m thinking you will by then.” Oh. I hadn’t considered that. I guess we’d see what a longer cooling off period did. 

Leading us out of the bathroom, Damon looked down the corridor to make sure it was clear. It appeared to be. We heard Carol talking in the chapel, so we really had left just in time. He grabbed my hand as we navigated the halls. The closer we got to our destination though, the slower Damon went until he finally stopped in front of me. His forehead creased as he said, “I smell blood.”

A lot? Could be from blood bags. Could be a person. Depended on how much of it there was. “How much?”

“I don’t know . . . wait here. I’m going to go find Stefan.”

If Damon could smell the blood from here, then the others could from the chapel, and they should’ve either left or investigated to catch the guy. If they hadn’t yet . . . well, it didn’t make much sense to me. I didn’t need to wait. I knew where the blood would be. Up with the hunter, who was waiting for anyone to show signs of smelling it. 

I veered off to my left and went to the picture I’d hidden a stake and gun behind. The stake was to wave my flag as a fellow hunter if needed. The gun was a last resort. My first resort was behind the next picture in the row, a blow gun. When you were in a place where you had to be even quieter than a dart gun would allow, then a blow gun was ideal. I tucked the gun in the back of my waistband, pulled my tank top down over it, and then carried on down the hall. 

Without stopping, I ducked down to find the vial I’d taped under a small table and took one of the darts around the edge of the blow gun, stuck it in the top of the vial, and pulled a decent amount of sedative into it. I loaded it and was ready by the time my foot hit the first step. By the time I was halfway up the stairs, I heard Elena on the speakers. That meant she was at the front, a perfect target, because she was a baby vampire and couldn’t control her urges yet. She was the reason they’d stayed, wasn’t she?

Stefan had stayed, because she’d insisted on saying something, and he wanted to help her if she lost control. If Caroline and Tyler were still here, then it’s because they were staying to help protect her too. They were team players, who had control of their urges and knew that Elena didn’t, and Elena was willing to put them all in jeopardy just so she could say a few pretty words. This guy was a serious threat. I told her that. Why the fuck didn’t she ever listen to me? 

I was lucky that Damon had filled me with enough good vibes that it really only registered as a minor annoyance. Creeping near the top, I crouched down and silently made my way through the door to the half wall across from it. The hunter was focused out on the church, but that didn’t mean he also wasn’t focused on his surroundings the way I would be. I had one shot at this. Putting the blow gun to my lips, I gave myself a count of two, rose from my position, and blew. I saw enough to know it hit him in the neck and ducked down, back to the wall to wait for the sound of his body hitting the floor.

It never happened. So not human then? I looked up in time to see him look over the half wall, and he reached down to pick me up under the arms to lift me, like I was nothing. Definitely not human. It wasn’t just that there’d been skin on skin contact, and he didn’t die or feel like he'd been marked in some way, but even given his size, his strength wasn’t human at all. 

He turned at the waist to throw me out and away from him. I would’ve rolled across the floor if he’d gotten his way, but instead, I latched onto his left arm and used the momentum he gave me with the attempted toss to swing around him like he was a maypole. Sliding to a stop on my knees behind him, I let go of his arm and stabbed him in the right hamstring with my stake as a hello. Dodging to my left as his hand flew back to reach the stake, my left hand touched the ground, and I used it to support my weight as I brought my right foot up to hammer the stake in further with a swift kick. He stumbled forward with a yell, and as his hand finally wrapped around the stake, I rolled onto my back, so I could use both feet to kick him as hard as I could in the ass. It put him even further off balance, and he flew into the half wall. 

By the time he’d turned to face me again with my stake in his hand, I’d pulled my gun, and it was aimed at his chest. “What’d I tell you? Not on the worst days of some of these people’s lives.” He’d definitely made it worse for whoever the girl behind me on the balcony was. Her being up here was reason enough for me to not get in trouble with Liz for killing him right now if it meant protecting her. I think there were laws that allowed for that kind of thing, or Damon said there were.

“You’re not a vampire. What are you?”

I could ask him the same thing. With a smirk, I answered, “I’m a Hunter of the Night, Connor the Day Hunter.”

Taking a step forward, he said, “You know what I think? I think – “

That was all the time my disarming him at the door earlier had bought either one of us. He wasn’t going to stop even though I thought it was clear that I was also a hunter by that point. I pulled the trigger, and he moved fast enough that even though we were no more than 4 feet apart, the bullet missed his heart. Not vampire fast, so it still hit him in the shoulder as he sprinted to the nearest window, but definitely not human. He crashed through the glass, and I got to my feet grumbling, “Think again,” because he clearly hadn’t thought I was going to do shoot him. I heard screams down in the church below but ignored them as I went to the window to see if he was on the ground outside. Nope. No clear way down from a two-story drop for a human like me, but there was a drain pipe over to my right. I climbed out the window, planted my feet on the sill, and hung onto the frame to steady my balance, then took a leap of faith that I’d catch the drain pipe. 

I fell a few feet, but got it, and then used it to help slow my fall while I put the soles of my boots on the side of the church as another set of brakes. _Knew these gloves would come in useful for something today._ Sliding to the ground, I looked for blood, saw a few drops and then jogged until I found the next ones. I rounded a corner and saw a black truck, but someone else had gotten there before me, and it’s unreal how quickly things can change sometimes. 

It felt like my entire world was collapsing as one, two, three, four, five shots went straight into Damon’s chest, and Connor got the upper hand. I saw Damon move to hold off the stake Connor pulled and knew he wasn’t dead yet, so I took aim and shot Connor in the hand. I should’ve gone for his heart or head, but I’d really been focused more on getting that stake away from Damon, because I remembered how the last hunter I killed had used his body falling to impale Klaus in his final seconds. I just didn’t stop there.

I kept firing as he dropped the stake. One, two, three more shots in a trail down his arm as it fell. I suppose I was hurting him, drawing it out because of what he’d just done, and apparently prolonging the hunt, because not only did I not kill him straight away, but I also allowed him to go the two or three feet he needed to make it into the truck. It certainly wasn’t because I was granting him clemency. I fully intended to see him again to finish the job. I just wanted him to know how it felt to be hunted even if it was only for a day or two before I finally caught up to him. 

With a groan, Damon looked up at me as I got to him. “What was that?” Tearing my eyes off the back of Connor’s truck, I looked down at him, and he groaned again. “Never mind . . . I know what that was. Come here.”

Stefan ran up next to me and went to help Damon up, but Damon shook his head. “No, it has to be her . . . She needs to flip it back,” and it annoyed Stefan.

“She doesn’t have a switch, Damon. You two need to stop acting like she does.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t see what I just saw.” He looked past Stefan to find me. “Eve, come here . . . I’m okay.”

Dropping down next to him, I said, “I thought – “

He smirked. “I know . . . Help me dig these out, Hunter of the Night.” 

“Damon, we can do this at home. We need to get her inside.”

I ignored Stefan. I didn’t want Damon to wait that long. These wooden bullets had something that gave them a little extra kick. I found the first hole in his shirt and the corresponding wound it belonged to in him. I was as careful as I could be while I prodded for the bullet, and when I found it, I said, “You heard that?” to distract him.

“Think we all – “ I pulled the bullet out between my finger and thumb. He groaned in pain, and I quickly looked at him to make sure he was okay. “did . . . How’d you get down here so fast?”

Knowing about the depth I needed to go now, I found the next wooden bullet faster and answered, “Drain pipe,” as I pulled, and he wasn’t as loud that time. I think I’d use that technique on the next one. “Who was the girl?”

“Huh uh, no . . . We’re not talking – “ I found the third bullet, and he growled in frustration before saying, “about more reasons for you to hunt him right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because, I don’t think – “ His fist hit the ground, and he growled again as I extracted the bullet. “it’s a good idea for you to hunt him.”

I stopped searching for the fourth one to look at him. “What?”

“Are you telling me you weren’t just torturing him and then let him go, so you could try to draw it out?” I went back to trying to locate the fourth hole. When I found it, he asked, “Eve?” and I took a stubborn breath as I delved into the wound. My stomach clenched in guilt, but I tried to ignore it the way I was trying to ignore the effect the sun was starting to have on me. “I’ll take that as a yes.” My fingers found the bullet, and he didn’t make a sound as I pulled that one out. When I glanced at him, he was watching me. 

“What?“

In frustration, he found the fifth bullet, and with a grunt, plucked it out himself. Throwing it to the side, he sat up. “9 times out of 10, you can kill no problem, but this? This is different, and I wouldn’t care if I knew you’d be all right with it, but I know you won’t be. I know you’ll hold onto it forever . . . That is what you do. The pictures you painted the night of our campfire felt so real that I could almost see them myself, and I realized it isn’t just because you remember them. You relive each one in vivid detail . . . every drop of blood, every look of fear, every scream . . . They die, and the torture is over for them, but you never stop torturing yourself, and that was with your Dad, the Grand Brainwasher in Chief, telling you to do it. Don’t even get me started on how you just had to go into that die to make up for all the people you couldn’t save last summer and because you somehow think Alec dying is your fault too. Wallowing is just the tip of the iceberg with you.”

My vision got a little blurry I said, “I thought he killed you,” and he wrapped his arms around me as he pulled me to his chest. 

Taking off his jacket, so he could use it to shield me from the sun, he murmured, “I know . . . and it happened after you knew he didn’t, so you did it to punish him for making you think he did for even a second, but that isn’t why you hunt either. You don’t do it for revenge, and I bet you’re already feeling bad about it.”

I did. I was imaging Connor somewhere right now with his poor arm trying to manage with it himself. Killing him would’ve been fine given what he did to that girl, and since that hadn’t worked out, I’d be okay with the single gunshot wound to his shoulder. To protect Damon, I would’ve been fine with the hole in Connor’s hand or one in his head, but what I did to his arm? I nodded, and Damon picked me up saying, “Yeah, that’s what I thought . . . How close are you to getting sick right now?”

My temperature had to have dropped from normal to zero in the second I thought Damon died, but I hadn’t felt anything shooting Connor. There was some guilt there now, but it was that and everything that’d happened plus the sun that had started causing me problems in only a couple of minutes. “Pretty close.”

“Thought that too . . . I’ll take you home, and we’ll have one of our normal nights.”

“I should try to find him.”

“It can wait until tomorrow.” Damon took another three steps before stopping. “Is it to help him or kill him?” I shrugged a shoulder, and with a sigh, he started walking again. “None of this changes that he still needs to die, Eve.”

“I know, but we haven’t killed him yet, and right now, he could be scared and alone . . . cowering in a corner somewhere.”

“He isn’t a bunny, Eve. He’s a cold-blooded killer.”

“Damon?”

“All right, fine. We’ll find him and put him out of his misery . . . but not now. You need to be indoors, and not tonight. Tonight we’re doing normal.”

“But he’s bleeding out now.”

“Great! It’ll make him weaker, which will make killing him easier. I just want a normal night in with you.”

“Okay, but I’m looking for him tomorrow.”

“You’re really going to drop it just like that?” 

“You’ve been asking for a normal night for a while . . . and you did almost die.”

“I seriously need to start almost dying every day. It’s the only thing that makes you listen to me. What happened to waiting?” 

Did he think that I was going to start doing what he said just because we’d had sex? “What, you think just because – “

“No . . . well, I thought it might make a difference.”

“Well, it doesn’t. You can be bossy with that all you want, but – “

“Bossy?! I’m not . . . wait, I can?”

“Yes, but – “

“Can I get that in writing?” I peeked up at him through the curtain of his jacket but quickly had to retreat from the light and hide my eyes again as he said, “I’ll take it.”

“Take what?”

“If that’s the deal, I’ll take it, and you can keep driving me crazy with everything else.”

“I’m not really sure that it needs to be a deal. It’s just the way that it is.”

“Even better . . . but we’re definitely having a normal night in, right?”

“Yep.” Pointing behind us, I added, “But I forgot my gun.”

“That’s all right. Stefan will get it.”


	12. Game Night

Without looking up from my newly purchased horde of board games that were spread out in the living room, I said, “Hey, Stefan,” and he came around the corner on his way into the room.

“Okay, I have to ask. How do you do that?”

I shrugged a shoulder. There wasn’t anything special about it - the scrape of a foot that sounded like a person’s distinct gait, a scent, small personal details that my instincts sometimes caught without me even consciously knowing it - they all let me know who a person might be without me needing to see whoever it was, especially if that person was a vampire. “Practice, I guess.” 

Looking for something to say as he wandered further into the room, Stefan took in all the games and asked, “So, you guys are really going to stay in and play board games tonight?”

“Uh, yeah. There's a 'no cheating' rule in place.' We'll read the directions and follow them to the letter.” I looked down at my choices again. “I was thinking _Risk_ , but if you want to play too, we could try out _Beware the Betrayal at House on the Hill_.

Coming around to sit on the arm of the couch nearest to where I was, Stefan answered, “I’ll be going out soon.”

“Damn.” I actually wanted to give that other game a try, and it needed at least 3 people.

He smiled. “Maybe next time? I can honestly say I haven’t done anything even remotely close to that ‘normal’ with my brother in 145 years.”

“Well, let me warn you now. We’re both pretty competitive.”

He laughed before he ducked his head and took a deep breath. “I was actually kind of hoping we could talk before I left.”

I figured as much. He didn’t usually initiate conversations this awkwardly. “Am I in for one Stefan’s infamous chats? What’d I say the last time?”

He snorted again before glancing at me and finally said, “I know Damon was in here clearing out all your hidden stakes in preparation for game night . . . I figure I’m safe.”

“Figure away.”

His forehead creased in uncertainty, and I gave him a Cheshire Cat grin. Hanging his head, he nodded before saying, “I think we’re getting away from what I wanted to talk about.”

“I know. That’s the point.” When he looked at me that time, it seemed like he was starting to get a little sulky, so I flicked my hand in his direction and sighed. “Go ahead.”

“I heard what my brother said today.”

“He’s said a lot of things today. He is a talker.”

Not falling for the bait, Stefan clarified, “About how this happened to you, because you were trying to make up for the people you couldn’t save this summer.”

“Oh.”

Sitting forward, he put his forearms on his knees, and it almost looked like he was praying as his hands clasped together. Taking another deep breath he said, “We’ve talked about what happened twice, and both times, I asked why you didn’t kill me. The first time, I said you should have, and that must’ve made it seem like I was putting the blame for what I did on you. I wasn’t myself, but that’s still no excuse for it. The second time, I just wanted to know why, but when you told me, I should’ve said you had nothing to feel guilty about."

"You weren’t just watching Klaus so you could learn how to beat him and let us get away with murder in the process. Maybe you feel that way, because you want to feel like you had some kind of control over what happened, but I was there. You had no control, Eve, and you may not have killed me, but that doesn’t mean you killed those people. Those people died because I killed them. They died because he killed them. We did that, not you, and despite what you were up against, the first time you saw me about to cross a line you couldn’t accept, you stopped me."

A brief pause, and he glanced at me before bowing his head again. "I should’ve thanked you for that a long time ago . . . I didn’t know how you got him to stop pushing me so hard after that, but I knew it was because of something you said or did, and I should’ve thanked you for that too . . . I can’t really apologize. There’s no way to apologize . . . the wrongs I committed were too great for any kind of apology. I just wanted you to know that it’s not your fault.”

I didn’t say anything at first. The pause was long enough that he felt the need to look in my direction again, and the moment he did, I griped, “Will you people stop trying to steal my guilt. It’s mine. I earned it, and it is locked down tight, so you aren’t going to get it. Feel your own. That’s fine, but I know what I did and what I didn’t do . . . and maybe I should thank you too because before that road trip, I didn’t care at all about victims that I didn’t save. I’d find a body, examine it for evidence, and move on without a care in the world . . . I even handed that woman at the farmhouse over to your brother to kill, so we could get you out, and I did it without caring, because hey, I didn’t kill her. There was me before the road trip, and there me was after . . . Just like there was me before I died this last time and the ghoul I’ve become now . . . this didn’t happen to me. I was an active participant in choosing it because of the wake-up call I got this summer, and I’m better for it.”

He looked confused. “A wake-up call?” 

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“It’s putting a positive label on something that was anything but positive . . . Damon said you would do this. He said you’re a lot of things, but an optimist is one of them, and you can find a way to spin almost anything, but if I only listen to the spin and not the meaning behind it, I’ll miss the important part.”

He'd run this by Damon before bringing it to me? Interesting. “And what’s that?”

“Well, based on what you just said, I stole your innocence, didn’t I?”

I deadpanned, “I’m not sure how that blood-addled brain of yours remembers it, but I can assure you no innocence of mine was lost on our road trip from hell,” and he immediately became flustered.

“No, what I meant was – You’re messing with me, right?“ 

My eyebrow arched up in response. “Not at all. It was life changing, but I left Chicago with the same amount of innocence that I had before I left here.”

More unsure than ever if I was talking about the kind of innocence he’d meant or if I’d misinterpreted him in uncomfortable ways, his brow furrowed in turmoil. “No, I know you and I . . . we didn’t –“

With a smirk, I cut him off, “You and I? Now you’re just being gross, Doll Maker,” and he froze before sitting back with an embarrassed chuckle. 

“I take it that means that Damon was right when he said I’d know you were really over what happened when you stopped with the Doll Maker and ripper jokes.”

Well, I didn’t consciously do it, but that didn’t mean that Damon was wrong. “Oh, those are never going to stop.”

“He said that too.”

“What else did he say?”

“That if I keep wanting to talk about it, you’ll get angry, and he’ll have to break my neck when you ruin the rug.” I smiled, and Stefan said, “Earlier . . . how did you get my brother to do that?”

“Do what?”

Hanging his head again, Stefan chose his words carefully. “He talked you into doing the right thing. It might’ve been the right thing for you, but he still did it, and he wasn’t just trying to manipulate you into doing it. He really believed in what he was saying.”

“I didn’t do that . . . he did. He takes his role as my morality police very seriously.”

Looking at me, he sighed. “I’m not kidding. I really want to know. It’s the closest I’ve seen my brother be to being my brother in so long that I almost forgot what he was like. The Damon I know would have convinced you to keep going, so he could have fun while bringing you down with him.”

“He’s an anti-hero, Stefan, not a villain.”

“An anti-hero?”

Stefan’s perplexity made me smile. “Yeah, you know what an anti-hero is, right?”

“I know what it’s supposed to be, but why you don’t you tell me what you think it means.”

He was just being a smart alec now. He was annoyed, because he thought I was teasing him again or holding out on him, but I wasn’t. “Well, the short answer is that he can do the morally right thing even if he’s doing it for personal reasons. That doesn’t mean it’s not still getting done.”

“And the long answer?”

How would I describe how I saw Damon to someone who consistently overlooked anything good about him? Hm. “He makes the hard decisions when nobody else will, because he’s fluid enough in his morals that he can, but also because he’s strong enough to do it. Those kinds of decisions and the consequences that come with them will leave an invisible mark on anyone. I find his raw aggression endearing. It – “

“How can you say that?”

“Judge me all you want, but I do. It is untamed and leads to violent destruction. For me, there is a beauty in that, because love it or hate it, it inspires awe, and above all else, it is raw, so when he does something wrong, there’s always a reason for it. Those reasons are endearing.”

“There is no reason that could ever justify – “

“Have you already forgotten that I’ve seen just a tiny fraction of the things that _you’ve_ done? Once you’ve committed to a kill, you are cold and detached until it’s over, but with him, there is always a reason for why he’s destructive.” He sat back with a sigh, like he thought I was a lost cause. “Your problem is that you don’t see him, Stefan. I don’t overlook _him_ for what he could be or what he should be, because he already is, and that’s why I believe he’s an anti-hero. So my answer to your original question would be that he did it, not me, because he takes his role as my morality police seriously and wanted to do it. If you want a better answer than that, then you’re gonna have to ask him.”

“But why would that be the role that he’s decided to take on for you?”

“She already told you. I do it, because I want to do it. It’s as simple as that.” We looked, and Damon was casually leaning against the door frame into the room. Yeah, he and Caroline were really starting to become my blind spots as far as vampires went. I wish he hadn’t heard any of that. It’d be fine if I was saying it to him, and we were alone, but saying it to someone else, particularly his brother? Not so much. His impulse now would be to prove me wrong, and that would only grow until he did.

Remembering all the times he’d been screwed over by Damon in the last century and a half, Stefan’s eyebrows rose. “That simple, huh?” 

“Well, it’s not like we don’t still have our fun. You wouldn’t approve of most of it . . . board game night excluded.” Stefan finally laughed, and Damon smirked as he finally came into the room. “Are you sticking around?” 

Seeming torn, Stefan looked around him again at the games on display, because now it was his brother asking, and whatever he’d seen today in Damon had struck a chord with him. “Don’t play _Risk_. I won’t be gone that long. We’re just going to have a lantern memorial service. I’d ask if you two want to come, but – “

I stopped him there. “Probably not a good idea. I did kill two of the 14 presumed dead.”

Stefan hesitated and then said, “I was thinking it’d be more for the people we’ve lost.”

“Probably a worse idea.” I didn’t want to sit and reminisce on the losses I’d had. I kept those with me everywhere I went, and I didn’t want to honor them metaphorically using some lantern, especially when it ultimately resulted in letting that lantern go.

“That’s what I thought. Your reactions are really tied to your emotions as well as the sun?” 

I nodded and started looking through the games to find something that wasn’t _Risk_. When I had game nights with Dad, it was usually _Monopoly_ , checkers, or chess, and I didn’t want to play them anymore, so we’d gotten games I’d never played with him. “What happened today was because of outright anger . . . Really, I’m surprised something like that didn’t happen sooner. I am an angry person . . . but I think what made it worse was that the pain made me angrier.”

They shared a look as Damon sat next to Stefan, and Stefan asked, “What do you mean?” 

“I mean it doesn’t usually hurt . . . I just feel sick, and it’s not like the curse itself was causing me to be angrier or anything. It was just me. I fell into a loop I couldn’t escape . . . Like, not all pain pisses me off, but if I stub my toe, it makes me pretty mad . . . It was like that kind of an instant anger at the first stab and then that gave me a more intense pain, which pissed me off more and so on and so forth.”

Sitting forward, Damon said, “So you’re saying you lost control?” 

I reached for _Life_ and picked it up to read the back again as I answered, “I might have had it at some point. I’m not sure when I lost it . . . and then all I was eventually left with was the pain, because I couldn’t get angry anymore . . . worse aversion therapy ever.”

“Or what was really making you angry left the room.” I looked up at him, and Damon asked, “What sparked it off?”

Oh no. I didn’t want him go after Elena or try to keep her away from me. It hadn’t been a great trial run, but it’d get better. “I, uh . . . Sparked it off how?”

“I mean what turned you into the mess I found on the bathroom floor, Eve? Despite what you think, you’re not actually angry all the time. You get frustrated or annoyed, sure, but there are only two people I know who make you angry, and one of them wasn’t there today.” Bonnie and Elena? My shoulders dropped, and getting to his feet he said, “That’s what I thought.”

Before Stefan could say or do anything to keep him from confronting Elena, I exclaimed, “Wait!” Damon looked down at me, and I sighed. “It wasn’t her fault . . . She didn’t really do anything. I felt guilty about some stuff that I think it would be better for me not to get into now, and then I got annoyed that she and Jeremy wouldn’t do what I wanted them to do without an explanation. Then instead of listening to me, she said she’d go find you, but - “

“You told her not to do it?”

Ducking my head, I said, “You said you’d bring me back here, and I couldn’t go yet. The hunter had just gotten there.”

“And then?” I looked up at him, and he said, “You didn’t go from that to what I saw without a whole lot in between.”

Bowing my head, I focused on my hands and answered, “She he wouldn’t stop looking at me, and she was being all sympathetic. She just wouldn’t leave me alone, so I told her to take her stupid face and get away from me, and that’s when it really started hurting . . . which made her drag me through the church, and it broke my umbrella, and even when I threw it at her, she still wouldn’t go away until she left to go get you . . . I was the dickhead, not her . . . It was entirely me.”

I gave Damon a penitent glance, and Stefan said, “It was punishing you.” Damon and I both looked at him, and he said, “That’s what Hell is supposed to be, isn’t it, a place for punishment . . . and without anyone else to punish . . . that just leaves you.”

I was the first one to react. “What is wrong with you two? First Elena thinks I might have to kill people to make myself feel better, and now you’re essentially saying that if I don’t want what happened today to happen again, then I have to start sending people there to spread the pain out more. Talk about making the worst of a bad situation.”

Realizing what I’d said in front of his brother, he looked up at Damon, “That’s not what I meant. I – “

Damon rolled his eyes. “I already know how to make her better.”

Stefan seemed dubious. “Damon, whatever you’re planning – “

Damon must’ve caught my glare at him setting it up to brag about what happened today, because he got himself out of it pretty well as he cut Stefan off. “The last thing she needs is to feed it souls and give it more power. What she needs is a witch to get rid of it, and I am working on finding one.” I wasn’t ashamed of it or anything. I guess I just wanted it to be something that was between he and I. So much of our life together had been taken up by the others. It was nice to have something that was just ours again. When he focused on me more directly, and he added, “And it wasn’t punishing her, because she didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just another example of someone in her family trying to force what they want on her with disastrous results.” Nah, I’d been a dickhead, but it felt kind of nice to have someone unequivocally take my side even though he hadn’t been there. 

“Remind me, Damon. Weren’t you the one who stuffed her in a coffin to make her do what you wanted?” _Shut up, Stefan._

Damon’s eyebrows arched. “At least she’s alive today because I did . . . How’s letting your girlfriend make the choice to die working out for you? Oh wait, that’s right. It didn’t just turn her into one of us. It killed my girlfriend too, and . . . Eve, what’d I say about weapons tonight?” 

He looked down at me in irritation, and I hid the dart gun I’d gotten from under the couch behind my back. “But it’s game night.”

“Exactly.”

I quickly said, “Yeah, exactly,” because if he started to lose or even started to win and got smug about it, I wanted to have something on me that would knock him out. No? Yeah, that look was a definite, ‘no.’ He put his hand out in a silent request for me to hand it over, and the petulant expression on my face seemed to have some kind of positive effect. He didn’t laugh, but his eyes gave away his change of humor, and before I gave it to him, I grumbled, “This better not have disastrous results.” It almost did. Stefan would have missed the service if he hadn’t gotten out of there at vampire speed, because as soon as Damon got the dart gun, he took a shot at him. 

Sitting on the ground across from me, he asked, “So what are we playing?”

“Do you think he’ll still want to play, because I was thinking _Risk_.”

“You’ve never played any of these, right?” I shook my head, and he said, “ _Battleship?_ I always thought it looked boring, but since I can’t compel you, that might make it more interesting.” He didn’t know what Stefan would do, but he wanted Stefan to play even if he wouldn’t say that, and he’d go with the game he thought was boring if it meant there was a chance Stefan would come back early to get involved. If Stefan didn’t and disappointed him . . . Well, there was always a reason behind why he acted out.

“Sure . . . Although, I bet it’d make just about any game more interesting if you can’t cheat.”


	13. Being Poetic

We’d parked a ways back so as not to give away the element of surprise with the rumble of an engine, and I was focused on my surroundings as we walked down the dirt lane way. This was the most secluded public camping place near town. It was the one where Jules had killed those campers, and at this time of year, there shouldn’t be anyone staying here. If someone was, it’d probably be the hunter, and whether or not other people came here for hiking on a day trip, he might’ve set up traps along the way. He didn’t seem to care much about hurting or killing people. “Hey.”

I glanced at Damon from under my new umbrella. “Hm?”

“Did you really give my brother the speech last night?” What speech? Before I could ask, he said, “The one where you lay out the reasons why you think I’m better than him.”

“I didn’t say you were better than him. I said that he doesn’t have a reason to kill, just reasons not to do it, and you do.”

Focusing down on the path, he asked, “Do I though?”

“Yep, and if you kill someone now just to prove to me you don’t, then you’d actually be proving my point.”

Quick look in my direction, and he challenged me with, “And if I did, what would you do?”

“A happy dance for being right.” 

Catching my sarcasm, he asked, “Seriously, what would you do?”

“Probably help you with body disposal.”

“And then?”

I stopped and turned to him. “I don’t know, Damon. Do you want to test it, so we can find out?”

“I’m not the guy you think I am.”

Rolling my eyes behind my sunglasses, I carried on walking as I muttered, “And yet the second I found out you’d heard us, I knew you would do this.”

“Do what?”

“Try to blow this up beyond repair, and I was hoping that game night would give you enough of a pause not to do it, but then Stefan had to go and bail over nothing.”

“You’re just defending me for anything I might do.”

“Not defending. Giving reasons, because they’re actually there.”

“But Stefan was right. There are no ‘good’ reasons that could justify me doing that to you.”

I saw a camper van up ahead. There really shouldn’t be anyone here, so it could belong to the hunter, but I didn’t see the black truck. If he was supernatural, then maybe he healed faster than a human and had gone out somewhere, or maybe he hadn’t been able to make it back here. Maybe it wasn’t his. I needed a closer look to confirm. “I’m pretty sure he was going to say ‘justify doing it,’ not ‘justify doing that to me,’ and I didn’t say they were ‘good’ reasons, just that I find them endearing.”

“What could you possibly – “

“I have my own reasons for that.”

He waited a beat before saying, “And what if I told you I killed someone you don’t know about? What if I told you that I killed – “

“Jessica Cohen? 25. Dark blonde. Green eyes. About 5’5’’? On a route that would’ve taken her right by Mystic Falls the last time she was seen. Anyone else?”

It was his turn to stop, but I kept going. “You knew?!”

“Did you really think that I wasn’t going to check it out when you told me that you were tempted to kill someone the night Rose died? Your secret’s safe with me. I didn’t tell Stefan about it even when he asked me if I knew how many people you’d killed.” 

“You lied for me?!”

Yeah, and it was one I actually managed to pull off. Stefan probably hadn’t noticed, because he was all ‘Must Get Revenge on Klaus for Losing Elena, and I’m Still Better Than Damon,’ at the time. “Well, it wasn’t really any of his business, was it?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew?!”

Finally stopping to look back at him, I shrugged. “I figured you’d let me know when you were ready.” He had no idea how to respond to that. “Looks like I was right."

"Do you really not care about it at all?” I hadn’t exactly been an angel after Rose died either, and he hadn’t done it since - not even during the week that I'd disappeared to go after Klaus. I turned away from Damon being melodramatic and continued on my path to the camper van. Speeding in front of me, he said, “What if I told you that she was scared?” I went to go around him, and he side-stepped in front of me. “She begged me not to kill her, and I did it anyway.”

I’d been saying for a while now that there were no lines Damon could cross that would make me turn against him, and it was true. “Do you know why I looked the way I did when you found me the night I slaughtered that pack?” 

He stood a little taller, and it would appear he didn’t know, but I knew that ‘innocent’ girl was one of the sides of me he cared about the most. “I didn’t feel bad about any of it, and I knew that made it worse somehow. I just kept thinking that Katherine was right. When the mood strikes, I am as ruthless as she is, or you are, but I never wanted you to see that side of me. I didn’t want you to think less of me, and I was terrified that you would be scared of me . . . but then you asked me to come home, like none of what I’d done mattered as long as I did. Would it make you change your mind if I told you what the alpha’s last moments were like?” 

He took a half step back, and I muttered, “Then get out of my way,” as I brushed past him, but when I got to the camper van a couple steps later, he grabbed my arm and pulled me behind him, so he could go first.

No obvious booby traps set up around the door, but I did notice some dried blood drops on the floor. That made it seem more likely this was the right place. Damon stepped into the RV, and nothing immediately happened, so again no traps. If this really was the hunter’s van, I would’ve expected something around the van and definitely inside the door, but maybe that was the real trap to lull any trespassers into a false sense of security inside. I’d still tread with caution. 

As Damon went left, I went right towards the sleeping quarters at the back. I saw some bloody towels under the curtain that separated the bed from the rest of the vehicle, and there seemed to be a lot of blood on them. I decided it’d be smarter not to just pull the curtain back for a better look. I might get a shotgun blast to the face. 

Turning, I said, “This is the right place,” just as two arrows shot out from the wall near the table and right into Damon. 

“Ow! You think?!” After that, he growled in frustration more than pain, because from the looks of it, he was stuck. “A little help here?” Maybe I could I use this in some way. He was a sucker for the poetic.

Sauntering over to him, I took my sunglasses off to have a look at what we were dealing with here. The metal cords still attached to the arrows were also attached to two pins on separate explosive devices. One arrow was in his thigh just out of his reach, and he couldn’t lift his leg to grab it, because if he did, he’d pull the pin. He couldn’t just bend down to get it either. If he even moved a couple of centimeters, it’d pull the pin attached to the arrow in his chest. That one wasn’t coming out without a fair amount of pain and damage. It'd gone all the way through, had a wide tip, and was at a bad angle, but it wasn't wooden. He could find a way out of this if he really wanted to do it. “I could.” Plucking lightly on the cord nearest his chest, I said, “But is that what you really want? You are the one who likes to blow things up, right?”

“What?! I – “ He looked at my face, and his expression changed to one of wariness. “Eve – “

“I mean it would be an obvious solution to your problems wouldn’t it? No more good, bad, right, wrong, failure, or falling shy of expectations.”

“What expectations? You don’t have any.”

My eyebrows arched at his sulky tone, and I stood up on my tip toes, so I could whisper into his ear as I said, “Oh, I have expectations. I wonder if you know what they are, because if what you really want is judgement for your murders and shortcomings, then you _chose_ the wrong sister.”

“I told you it wasn’t . . . Eve, can we talk about this when I’m not strapped to two bombs?”

Falling to my heels as I looked up at him with a faux-pout, I answered, “That’s assuming there’s going to be an after for us to have said talk, isn’t it?”

“What, are you doing Katherine now?”

“Well, why not . . . She’s the one who expects absolutely nothing out of you.”

“Eve!” Closing his eyes and forcing himself to take a deep breath, he opened them and tried again. “I take it all back, okay. I - “

“Take what back, Damon? That you feel like the most you’ll ever be is a monumental disappointment who is only worthy of hate? _Your_ expectations are that I will see it for myself someday and hurt you the way everyone else in your life has, so you’d rather prove it to me now in a way you can control, because at least that way, you can tell yourself it’s what _you_ wanted to happen. Can you really take all that back, or is that just a part of you?”

“Eve. “ He bowed his head, and when he looked back at me, he seemed tired. “What do you want from me?”

He may want he and I to work even more than I did, but there was a part of him that was always waiting for me to turn on him, or maybe thought I should. It was his version of an ‘innocent me’ standing in the woods covered in blood. Only the blood covering him was from a century and a half of being a monster. The problem wasn’t that he and I were different. It was time. He’d had a lot more of it than I did, which meant that he’d received a lot more damage, so it was more difficult for him to accept it when I told him to just come home the way he had me. “Either there’s a real reason behind why you’re my morality police, or there isn’t.” Looking at the wires attached to him, I said, “There’s a way out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into, and it won’t be easy, but nothing in life ever is.” Hoping he got my double meaning, I turned my eyes up to him to add, “It just depends on how much you want it.”

I stepped away from him, and he yelled, “Are you seriously going to leave me here?!!”

Picking up my umbrella, I slid my sunglasses back on as I answered, “Mmhmm . . . I have to set up a perimeter for when he comes back, and if you take too long, I can use you as bait. He’s not a bunny cowering in a corner, which officially turns this back into a hunt,” and tossed the umbrella on the floor with a smirk before walking out the door. 

I got half the perimeter set and then had to find a tree to sit against, so I could rest. That was a definite ‘no’ on the sunglasses being enough by themselves, then. Good to know. I needed a distraction, or I was going to get sick. 

_Wonder where Connor went._ He’d been here and left, so where’d he go? Was he walking around town shaking everyone’s hand as he went, or what? Seriously how had that guy gotten by with doing that or anything else he did as a hunter for even a couple of days let alone however long he’d been doing this? 

I was watching the road and waiting for signs of movement around me when I heard a yowl of fury come from inside the RV. _Oh, that didn’t sound very good._ I went to get up and fell over. “Eve!!” I pushed up with my hands to try again and decided to lay back down. It was too easy to get sick in that position. “Eve!!” 

I mumbled, “Here . . . I’m here.”

A second later, Damon was crouching down over me. “What the hell are you doing?” 

He shoved the umbrella in my hand before picking me up, and I rested my head on his shoulder, while I closed my eyes. “Showing you the truth of things.” I was his way out as much as he was mine. 

“I need to get you home. Will you be all right if I run to the car?” I shook my head, and he started walking at a brisk pace. I was almost asleep when he said, “Are you still with me?”

“Mm.”

“You know why I do it, don’t you.” He sounded like he was sure I did. “But if you need me to say it, so you know that I know it too, then here it is . . . We're standing on the same ledge of a cliff, and I’ve been to the bottom, so I know what’s down there. You’ve never asked me to pull you back from the edge when you can’t do it yourself, but I know you need me to do it, because you wouldn’t survive the landing, and that means I can’t fall. When I do start to slip, you make it easier for me not to go over, because you know slips are part of the terrain, and you don’t hold it against me. It makes you my lifeline too, and you’re the only person who knows I need one, because you're the only one who knows that there are some places I've been that are so dark that not even I want to go back . . . That’s why I’m your morality police, and it’s how you make me a better man without expecting me to be, while also expecting me to be one, because I have to be to be your partner.” 

I liked the way he said it better than the way I thought it in my head. With a faint smile, I whispered, “I sound complicated.”

“You have been since the moment we met . . . and are totally worth it.” Looking down at me again, he added, “I should’ve gotten to you sooner.”

“Yeah, what took so long?” 

“Did you see the size of that arrow? I had to pull it out as slow as I could, so I didn’t blow up and leave you out here alone.”

“Then you got impatient and just ripped it out?”

“I knew I was running out of time, and no, I won’t be forgetting how that felt any time soon, so your point won’t be lost.” That’s what I’d been hoping. “Don't do anything like this again.” 

Well, if he didn't make it so difficult to get through to him sometimes, then I wouldn't have to work so hard to do it and do myself damage in the process. He'd needed a shock to the system to reset that vampire brain of his, and when words failed to do that, actions didn't.


	14. With the Best of Intentions

“Hi, is Eve here?” 

I looked up from where I was reading on the couch and without needing to see them knew that Damon was going to slam the door in her face, so I quickly said, “Hi Rebekah. Come on in.” 

I smiled to myself as I imagined the faces Damon was pulling and caught the tail end of one of them when he and Rebekah came around the corner. He stopped at the doorway, but kept an eagle eye on her. She and I would not be getting any privacy. “I noticed you weren’t at school today, so I thought – “ She stopped halfway across the room. “God, you look awful.”

I put my book down as I sat up. “I had a bit of a rough morning, but I’m feeling fine now. What’s up?”

Taking a few hesitant steps, she said, “Well, I’m having a party tonight at my new house.” 

New house? After Klaus left, she must've moved out. Guess it made sense. That house hadn't really had any soul. It was really more of a show house than anything personal for any of them. I took the flier she held out to me and reading it said, “Rebekah the rebel, breaking curfew, huh?” 

I looked up at her with a smirk, and she smiled before sitting on the edge of the couch where my feet were. “Do you think you might come?”

“Can I pick the music?” She hesitated, and I said, “I can’t really come out during the day right now, so it wouldn’t be until after – “

Giving me an apologetic look, she asked, “Are you a vampire now too?” and I shook my head.

“I, um – “

Damon finished for me, “She’s carrying some kind of necromancer’s curse that she came back with after she died. Remind me how that happened again,” and I sighed. 

_You think I can spin things, Damon? Well, how's this for spin?_ “Well, if she hadn't done what she did, then I'd still be wandering around with a blindfold and Hell in my future, so she actually helped me put Hell in my past, which is where I'd much rather it be, and really why she did it is understandable. She didn’t see the guy die, so she had no reason to believe he was really dead when Elijah told her he was, especially if it was coming from us. She was protecting her family. I get that." 

Throwing his hands up in frustration, Damon turned away from us and almost considered leaving the room. I couldn't keep my amusement at winding him up off my face when I looked Rebekah, and it seemed to make her relax. "Anyway, I can’t get to the party until a little later, and there are decades of music you need to catch up on, so I’d be helping you out. I’m not good at parties, and giving me that to do would be you helping me out . . . So can I?”

Her eyes narrowed as she studied me. “You really are a strange girl.” A slow smile crept up on her face as she added, “But if it means you’ll come . . . sure.”

“Can I bring Damon as my date?”

Rolling her eyes she looked back at him. “I suppose . . . just make sure he minds his manners.” Getting to her feet, she said, “I’ll see you after sundown,” before walking towards the door. She watched Damon the entire time she went around him to make sure he didn’t attack her, and as soon as I heard the front door shut, I picked up my book. Trying to hide my smile, I waited for it, and Damon did not disappoint.

“So we’re even forgiving Rebekah now?!”

“I told her when I let her out of her cell at the farm that we could start over, and I meant it.”

“Are you – “ Finally seeing that the corners of my mouth had turned up, he quickly said, “You are messing with me.”

“I’m having fun with the truth.”

“Eve – “

Turning the page, I asked, “Did you hear what I asked her?”

With a grumble, he flopped down on the end of the couch where she’d been and picked my feet up to put them in his lap. “Yeah, could you choose the music.”

“And?”

“Could you bring me.”

“Is that what I really said?” He puzzled over it, sure that he was right, and I lay the book flat against my stomach to watch him. “I asked if I could bring you as my date . . . What do you think?”

Resting his arm on the back of the couch, he looked at me, and his expression mellowed. Giving me a boyish smile, he asked, “Are you asking me on a date?”

“I think I am?”

Teasing me, he said, “You don’t sound sure.” With a brief mischievous grin, he added, “Miss Eve, what would people think if they knew you were being so forward?“

“Forward? Why, Mr. Salvatore, I’ve never heard such nonsense. Surely, a gentlemen such as yourself would not allow a lady to remain unaccompanied after dark in this wicked town full of debauchery, murder and mayhem.” 

Moving my feet, so he could crawl over me, Damon answered, “Miss Eve, a gentlemen such as myself would only be contributing to said debauchery, murder, and mayhem.” 

From the looks of it, he’d liked this game a lot more than he’d let me know. With a genuine smile, I looked up at him and drawled, “That is precisely why I would like you to accompany me, Mr. Salvatore.”

There was a twinkle in his eyes as he said, “I fear being seen in my company may bring you into ill-repute.”

“I care not one bit about that.”

He grew a little more serious. “Then as your escort, it falls to me to protect your honor, and I will not fail in my charge.” 

“So is that a yes?”

Dropping the act altogether, he said, “That is a ‘every time we do anything together it feels like a date, but I still should’ve asked you on one a long time ago, and now that it’s official, I want to do it right.’ No working tonight.”

“But the hunter – “

“Stole Tyler Lockwood’s werewolf venom at the school while we were in his RV? I know. I’m the one Jeremy called, and I don’t care.”

“And this greater evil that Pastor Young wrote in that letter you found in the RV? What if that – “

“I still don’t care.”

“So, you want a normal night two nights in a row?”

“We seem to be able to have more of them lately, so I say we take advantage of it while we can.”

He’d noticed it too. I wasn’t imagining it. “But don’t you find that strange? I mean, I get that there isn’t much going on right now, and we’re all on the same page about this hunter, which makes a change, but why is Rebekah the first person who has come here to really see me?”

He was going to argue with me until he thought about it, and then his brow furrowed before his expression softened. “Elena was here the first day."

"Until you scared her off, and she hasn't been back."

"You can't tell me that's what's bothering you. It's Caroline. She didn't have much to say to you when they were here the other day." 

"Or at the church."

"It’s probably nothing, and even if it isn't, then her loss is my gain.” After a pause he asked, “How long will it take you to get ready?” 

I’d never been on a date, so I didn’t know how long it’d take me to get ready. “I guess I’ll be ready when I’m ready.”

“So, you’ll do it? You’ll leave it all here, work, your weapons – “

“My weapons?”

The corner of his mouth turned up into a brief smile. “Well if I am to be your escort this evening, then I aim to take it seriously. You will have no need for such things.”

If it felt like a date every time we did anything together, then it might make it a little different for an actual date if I left my weapons here. I could always pick some up along the way if I needed them. Almost anything could become a weapon if you used it right. “Then I believe I do accept, Mr. Salvatore.”

The gleam in his eyes returned as he said, “What I believe, Miss Eve, is that role playing is going to be so much fun with you.”

Well, he certainly wasn’t holding back anymore, that’s for sure. “Mr. Salvatore, for all your worry about my honor, you really have become quite bold.”

“And if you persist in this facade, then I can guarantee you will see precisely how much of a cad I can truly be.” Tearing his eyes away from my lips, he got up saying, “But we’re doing this right, so go get ready,” and then offered me a hand to help pull me to my feet. 

It took me a little longer to get ready than it normally would. Selecting the right thing to wear took some time. Then there was drying my hair. Even on the cold setting, it felt a little too warm, but I powered on with it, and when I was done with the last bit of lip gloss, I was okay with the results. White headband, navy blue dress that showed off my shoulders but had long fitted sleeves, a thick white belt, and a skirt portion that fanned out at the waist and went to my knees. White ankle boots. I think even Caroline would agree that it worked. I suppose she should, she’s the one who made me buy it over the summer even though I’d been sure then that it’d be a waste of money and hadn’t thought I’d ever actually wear it. 

When I opened the door to go find Damon, he was on the other side, poised to knock. I guess he really wanted to do this right if he was actually knocking for a change. His eyes flitted down my outfit as he said, “You look – “ Catching himself, his attention came back to my eyes. “I’m at a loss for words.” 

New tactic? My head tilted to the side, while I appraised him, and then my eyes narrowed briefly. “You actually meant that, didn’t you?”

Stepping into my space, he said, “I’ve found some now.”

“Stop while you’re ahead.”

Giving me a brief smile, he countered, “That was probably my worst line yet.”

My eyebrow quirked up. “And yet I find it the most believable one.” Seeming quite pleased with his success, he offered me his arm, and I took it as I asked, “Who’s chariot will we be taking?”

“Mine, because I’m driving.” He’d most definitely co-opted my date. Looking out one of the windows we passed, I checked the sunlight levels, and it'd probably be dark in an hour or two, but I didn't want to chance anymore sun after the over-exposure to it this morning, so when we got to the front door, I dipped down to grab my newest umbrella while he opened the door, and we both froze when we saw who was standing on the front stoop. His response is not what mine would have been. “Not tonight, Elena. Whatever it is, it’s going to have to wait.”

Fiddling with her hands, like she’d been caught doing something wrong, she looked at me and said, “I, um . . . I hope it's okay that I'm here. I tried calling, but you didn’t answer.”

“Oh. Yeah, I was planning on leaving my phone here. What do you need?”

I ignored Damon throwing his head back and groaning, “Nooo!” I mean I felt a little bad for him if this was going to derail his evening, but still I waited, and Elena briefly glanced up at him before focusing on me. “I was hoping to get some bourbon to help me through Rebekah’s party.” 

She received similar looks of distrust from both Damon and I on that one. That so isn’t why she’d tried to get in touch with me. “Then just don’t go to her party.”

Giving me a glare she retorted, “That’s not an option. If I don’t, then it means she wins.”

“Okay, then go, and I’ll see you there.”

Her posture settled into an apprehensive pose as she took a step back. “Wait, you’re going?”

Damon answered for me. “Yep. Is that a problem?” 

“What? No. Why would that be a problem? I just said I was trying to get in touch with her . . . But are you sure it’s such a good idea for her to be going out in public right now?”

After assessing her behavior, Damon’s eyes narrowed before he nodded over his shoulder in the direction of the rest of the house. “I’ll tell you what . . . You can have whatever bourbon you want just as soon as you explain why you’re really here.” 

“I, um – “ She quickly looked at me and then back at him. “Can you give us a minute?”

“And leave you two alone together? Not happening. I don’t want a repeat of yesterday.”

“Please? I just want to ask her something.”

Pushing me out ahead of him, Damon said, “Yeah, well, like I said, it’s going to have to wait,” before closing the door behind him. 

She stepped to the side, and asked, “Well, how long are you two going to be?”

“Probably all night.”

“All night?! But – “

Something else caught his eye, and he whined, “I thought we finally got rid of you.”

I looked behind me, and a genuine grin flashed across my face. “Klaus!” It made him chuckle as he stepped under the overhang at the front entrance. “That reception coming from you was almost worth returning.” Taking in my attire as he got closer, he added, “Though I must say seeing you again certainly is. You are fetching, My Dear.” 

At the compliment, he tossed Damon a smug smirk, and I felt Damon tense behind me, so I reached back to grab his hand saying, “So are you back for Rebekah’s party, or – “

Turning his attention down to me, he shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m here on business. I received a call from Carol Lockwood saying that my one remaining hybrid has been attacked twice now by the same vampire hunter, and I was hoping to speak to the other vampire hunter in town to find out what she knew about it.”

I would’ve thought that he’d be out there trying to make more hybrids with what was left of Elena’s blood. Why would he drop doing that to come back for Tyler, particularly when Tyler hated him and wasn’t sired to him anymore? He’d said, ‘my one remaining hybrid,’ and there was something to that. Was he lying to cover up that he had made more or could he not make any more? Probably best not to dwell on it in front of him. “I know I shot him 5 times yesterday, and he was still able to jump Tyler today. I don’t think he’s completely human. He’s fast . . . but not vampire fast, and he’s muscular, but he’s stronger than a human his size should be. I don’t think he’s a werewolf with heightened abilities just before a full moon either, because we’re at a new moon phase right now.”

“You had him in your sights, and he’s still alive?”

“I may have been . . . prolonging the hunt.” 

His eyebrows rose, while he considered that. “If you were toying with him, then he must’ve done something that set you off.” Looking at Damon and then Elena he added, “To one of these two I’m guessing, and since you appear to be sticking like glue to Damon, I’d say it was him.” His eyes narrowed as he focused on me. Leaning down to get a closer look, he said, “And forgive me for drawing attention to it, but I would say that not all is well with you. Prolonging the hunt or not, he would still be dead by now if you were in top form. What happened?”

“I died.”

“I heard . . . and now you’re sick?”

“I prefer to say I’m cursed . . . I may have gone into the demon die’s world to destroy it.”

His forehead furrowed in surprise. “And yet you still remember everything, don’t you?” After a brief smile, he said, “Of course you do, and I’d wager that you succeeded in your task of saving the lost souls as well.”

“I don’t know if I did. I can't find the witch who was guarding the talisman.”

“Well, there’s no doubt in my mind. Not a single owner in all that talisman’s time has been up to the challenge or cared enough to accept it, but the second I saw it in your hand, I knew you would . . . Of course at the time, I was expecting it to keep you occupied and out of my way, which it didn’t, but I’m certain you proved me right in the end.”

Hearing how much Klaus actually knew about the talisman, Damon asked, “Is there a way to make her better?” 

_What? No – No. No. No. No. No._ I didn’t like Damon making deals or attempting to make deals on my account, and I especially didn’t want him making one with Klaus. I looked back at him over my shoulder to express that, but he was focused on Klaus, and Klaus answered first. “I’m sure there is, and I’d be willing to do it for free if she asked, but she won’t. She’d still feel like she owed me some kind of favor, and she doesn’t like to owe anyone . . . For you, I might be willing to do it for a price.” I quickly tore my eyes off of Damon to argue that, and Klaus looked down at me saying, “Since you’re unable to assist – “

“I can assist tonight. My batteries just get drained a lot faster during the day.”

“Be that as it may.” Directing his attention back up to Damon, Klaus added, “The sooner we deal with this hunter, the sooner I can be on my way again, and I think that Damon and I need to have another little chat, because apparently, I didn’t make myself clear enough the last time.”

Knowing that I was about to become difficult, Damon said my name to get my attention, and when I looked back at him this time, he concentrated on me. “We were going to have to do something about him anyway.” That might be what he was saying, but his eyes said something else entirely. It wasn’t that he was going to do this no matter what I said, which he would, and it wasn’t that he thought that it would be better for me if I wasn’t the one who killed the guy, the way he’d thought yesterday. He’d pulled me back from the edge on that one, and he knew it. It was something else, not quite a test, but a need for me to prove that I’d meant it when I told him that while Klaus might be faster and stronger, Damon was smart in his own right. If he was really my partner, then I needed to let him be one and trust him enough to come back. 

If that’s what he needed, then . . . I gave him a slight nod, but fuck sending him out with Klaus without any kind of protection. Faster than anyone anticipated what I was going to do, I uncapped one of the prongs on my umbrella, used it to slice a hole in my hand. You really could turn almost anything into a weapon if you had to do it. I offered it up to him, and he looked annoyed. “What are you doing?” 

Klaus shook his head in obvious disapproval of what he perceived to be Damon’s intellectual shortcomings. “If I’m not mistaken, she thinks you’ve stopped taking vervain, since I’ve been gone, and she has some to spare.” Looking at me, he added, “It would appear that all she wants me to do is chat.”

Pointing at him, I said, “Give me your word that you won’t kill him,” and Klaus huffed out a harsh sigh. 

“If he doesn't give me a reason to kill him, then I won't."

"Honest, but do better."

"It wouldn't be for anything trivial. You have my word on that. You and I make far better friends than we would enemies.” He gave Damon one last look and turned away like he expected him to follow. “Let’s go. We’ve got a hunter to catch.” 

Taking my hand and looking at the blood in my palm this time, Damon’s eyes flicked to mine, and I shrugged a shoulder. If he'd stopped taking vervain with Klaus out of the picture, then he could go in search for some of my vervain drops, but if Klaus wasn't willing to wait a couple of hours for the sun to go down for me to help, then he wouldn't wait even a minute for Damon. That worked for me, but Damon's the one who wanted to do this. I just wasn't going to let him do it without vervain. 

Lifting my hand to his lips, Damon focused on the back of Klaus’s head before as his eyes darted down to me when he'd made his decision. They only changed a little as he choked down enough for it to work, a couple of pulls at most. When he was done, his fingers threaded their way through mine as he moved my hand away and said, “I promise that I will make this up to you.” 

Klaus really didn’t seem to like him much, so I didn’t think he’d do what he’d done with Stefan and try to take him. Damon could handle that hunter if he ran into him again now that he knew what he was up against. He should be fine. “To be continued.”

“Tonight?”

His hopefulness made me smile. “Yeah, tonight . . . we can go out of town if we have to do it. I don’t care where we go.”

“I’ve already got an idea for something we can do a little closer to home.” Looking down at Elena, who’d gone quiet since Klaus had been here, he added, “Do me a favor. Take your sister to Rebekah's party and make sure she has fun." Before she’d even agreed, he let my hand go and was off at a determined walk to catch up with Klaus, but not so fast that Klaus would get the impression that he was in charge of anything in any kind of way.


	15. Baby Vampires

Sitting across from me on the couch, Elena asked, “What do you think he meant?” 

I didn’t know. I hadn’t exactly been there. While I was busy playing DJ in the corner behind the makeshift barrier of a table to keep people at Rebekah’s party from touching me, Elena and Stefan had ditched me at some point. I reckon I understood why and didn’t mind them wanting some alone time together, but I only found out about it when Stefan called to ask me to try and call Klaus. Apparently, Elena had been poisoned with werewolf venom, and he kept getting sent straight to voicemail. 

If he’d left repeated messages, then Klaus was getting them, and Klaus wouldn’t like to be summoned by people who weren’t his biggest fans any more than I liked it when they used to do it to me. In fact, if it were me, I'd probably get some enjoyment out of not doing what they wanted for that very reason. I left a message for Klaus saying something to that effect and then went to check on Rebekah, because she’d disappeared, and I wanted to see if she’d been poisoned too. Stefan was fine, but I'd been with Elena before the party, and if he'd been with her after the party, then the most likely place for her to have been exposed to the toxins was at the party. When I found Rebekah, she was in her room, sick, not something a vampire ever was unless it had to do with werewolf toxins, but she was also an Original, so it wouldn’t kill her. 

By the time I got home, Elena was sitting here looking better than I’d been expecting, and I found out that Klaus had been here to take care of it already. It wasn’t because I’d asked him to do it. It was because of what he’d said when he did it. He still thought she might be useful to him, and there was only one reason he'd ever thought she was useful to him. “Whatever it is, that vampire hunter is involved, because if Klaus said that a few hours ago he would’ve let you die, and now he wouldn’t, then the only thing he’s done in that time is go after that hunter.”

“But what does the vampire hunter have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know yet. The thing that seems most obvious is that Klaus thinks he can use your blood again even though you’re a vampire now. I’ll have to look into it.”

“You don’t think it has anything to do with what Imelda said to me, do you?”

“What, like you can transfer your doppelganger magic back over to me now?” She nodded. “I don’t know. I don’t know why she told you that. All I have are guesses until I can ask her. Have you heard from her at all?” 

Elena shook her head. “I haven’t tried today. I got a little distracted at school.”

I dryly said, “I heard,” and she sat back from me with a frown.

“What did Rebekah tell you?”

“Not much. She was mostly ranting at non-existent people, but it seems like a clear case of bullying to me.”

Exhaling a sigh of relief, Elena bowed her head. “It was. She was awful.”

“I was talking about you.”

Her eyes immediately flew back up to me. “What?”

“Elena, that’s your school. She’s new, alone, and out of place. I mean, it wasn’t just you. It didn’t sound like Matt or Stefan were very nice either, and if you ganged up on her – “

“Is that what she said?!”

“No. She wasn’t making much sense if I’m being honest, but from who her focus seemed to be on at the height of her hallucinations, I’d say it was all three . . . separate, together, it doesn’t matter. It’d feel like she was being ganged up on to her, and if the kids around you could hear it, then that kind of thing will spread to them and intensify. Do you really not remember what happened with me at the start of school?”

“But she killed me! I’m a vampire now because of what she did.”

“No, you killed you, and you’re the reason you’re a vampire now.”

“How can you say that to me?!”

“Because it’s true. You chose Matt.”

“I didn’t know – “

“That you would come back? It doesn’t matter. You chose to end your human life, and then when you did come back, you chose to turn, so stop playing the victim. Nobody forced you to – “

“Well, maybe if you hadn’t shot him so close to me, I – “

I snorted in derision as I cut her off. “You can fuck off with that nonsense, Elena. I will not be the Stefan to your Damon.”

“Is that what you told Damon when he told you how he turned?“

“He knows what I think about it, but I’m not telling you.“

“Why not? It’s because you agree with him, but you don’t want to take responsibility for doing basically the same thing to me, isn’t it?” 

The truth was that I could understand Damon’s point of view better, but I also knew that Stefan did it because he didn’t want to be without his brother, but I wasn’t going to walk around the next however many years with her blaming me for something that wasn’t my fault in any way, shape, or form. I heard Stefan clear his throat, but I didn’t need the reminder that he was there. He’d been chilling on the other side of the room, pretending to write in his journal this entire time. He’d originally planned to let us talk alone, but Elena had asked him to stay, and so far he’d been letting us figure it out ourselves the way Elena had said she wanted, but it sounded to me like he really wanted to jump in right about now. I wasn’t ready to let him do that yet. 

“A) I may be a monster half the time and look like one now, but I’m not actually a vampire, so I’m not afraid of the prospect of having to walk this world alone forever without you. B) You’re the one who freaked out and told me to do something to get us out of there in front of the guy, and – “

“His name was Pastor Young.”

“Whatever. I nailed him to that table for you, and then I got you away from him, so you wouldn’t be around his blood long enough to get tempted by it. C) I was trying to get you somewhere safe, so I could come back for Stefan and take him to you. If it was just so you could say your goodbyes, fine, or I would’ve gotten you the blood you needed if that’s what you wanted instead. It was entirely up to you what you did. Either way, I would’ve respected it. D) I didn’t shove that guy I shot in your face. I told you to get away from him, but you didn’t listen.”

“You have no idea how powerful these urges are, Eve. I couldn’t just get away from him like that, and I wouldn’t have been in a position where I had to choose Matt if it weren’t for what she did.”

Well, at least she’d backed off on blaming me, but she was still being a pain in the ass over this Rebekah thing. “And she wouldn't have done that if she hadn’t seen her brother die, which wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Alec’s Dad, and Alec’s Dad wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Jeremy touching the demon die, which wouldn’t have happened if you’d kept it safe and so and so forth all the way back to our conception. Stop focusing on the past. It can’t be changed. You’re a vampire now. Own it.”

“What, you mean like Katherine?!”

“Yes!” I’d been mostly just getting annoyed until that point, but that one hit me from out of nowhere. Taking a shaky breath around the stabbing pain in my stomach instead of allowing myself to get angry at it, I added, “You don’t know this, but I was at the tomb when she told you about how she turned, and I know how you reacted to it, but I have always loved that story. I’m who she was talking about when she said that some people thought that her story was the epitome of a survivor’s story and that those same people thought she was smart, tragic, and fearless, so yes, I think her story is remarkable, and – “

Elena’s eyes widened as she yelled, “Why don’t just say what you really mean? You said it before. She’s the better sister. You’d rather she was instead of me, right?” I mostly just stared at her, while I tried to collect my thoughts and breathe through the pain. Right about now, yeah, I’d take Katherine over this crap. “Or maybe Alec would’ve been the better sibling. He seemed to think he would be, and you didn’t exactly tell him he was wrong.“

She just had to go after Alec, didn’t she? Taking another quivering breath, I said, “Stefan, can you come deal with this?” in as normal a volume as possible. 

I may have been well aware that we had a chaperone, but it would appear that Elena had completely forgotten that he was there even after his reminder. She quickly looked at him in embarrassment as he put his journal on the ground and got to his feet saying, “I know you don’t want to hurt her, Elena, but it’ll keep happening as long as you let your emotions control you. She can’t afford to lose control of hers either. One of you has to be the first to stop.” Pretty sure I had stopped first, but okay. Guess I could’ve taken him up on his offer a little sooner.

“Are you taking her side now?”

He gave her a compassionate shake of his head. “No . . . just let her finish.” Crouching down in front of her, so she’d look at him, he gently added, “You have to let her get to the end to hear the nice thing she wants you to know, and it’ll calm both of you down if you do.” 

“Is that what she does with you, because with me, she usually saves the worst for last before she just walks away, like the time she said I was ten times worse than she thought I’d be or the time she said – “

He took her hands in his to get her attention, and she stopped as he validated what she was saying, “She can be hurtful.” I rolled my eyes and was seriously reconsidering getting him involved until he added, “But if it’s intentional, then it’s when she’s been hurt first . . . That’s not what’s happening here. The ending isn’t going to be bad.”

“How do you know that?! Why does everyone know more about her than I do!” I couldn’t help but feel for him. I’d been in his position once upon a time. I just couldn’t seem to make myself do it for Elena this time.

I got up and went to leave, but Stefan said, “Don’t go. She needs – “

“What about what I need, Stefan? I went through this once with my Mom. I will not go back to walking on egg shells around someone every moment of every day while they come to grips with being a vampire.”

“Just tell her what you wanted her to know.”

My shoulders fell as I sighed and looked down at her. “Your story could be remarkable too . . . Katherine’s story is of survival over insurmountable odds. You sacrificed your life for someone else. Stop taking that away from yourself and giving all the importance to the person who put you in that situation . . . I’m going to my room. Tell Damon that’s where I am when he gets home.”


	16. Date Night

I wasn’t in my room for long, enough that I was able to calm myself and settle my stomach, so maybe ten minutes, and then there was a knock on my door. Opening it, I wasn’t sure who it’d be, but smiled when I saw it was Damon. “You’re still in one piece.”

“Did you doubt that I would be?” I shook my head, and he said, “Are you ready to try this again?”

“You have no idea.” 

Correctly surmising that things hadn’t gone well here, he took my hand as he came into my room, closed the door, and led me to the window saying, “Then let’s get out of here.”

He opened the window and hopped out before turning back for me, and I noticed that there was an extra spring his step. “We’re sneaking out?”

“I figure that as far as dates go, this kind of exit has you and me written all over it, and I don’t want them to ruin this.” 

He had kind of jinxed us earlier when he said we’d had more time to ourselves the last couple of days. “Okay, let me get my shoes. I – “

“You don’t need them.” 

It was with confused amusement that I appraised him. “Where are you taking me?”

“Not far.” 

With a slow smile, I asked, “Are you trying to surprise me?”

“When was the last time you were surprised with anything good?” It was a rhetorical question meant to say that’s exactly what he was doing, and yet the question itself had me a little stumped. Surprise, like genuine surprise? In my experience, good or positive things that happened weren’t surprises, meaning that they didn’t appear out of nowhere and smack you upside the head with their unexpectedness. That’s not to say that good things didn’t happen. They did. It’s just that they tended to be situations that made sense in the moment, and I enjoyed them as such. Surprises for me did tend to swing more towards the negative and happened when I was caught unprepared. Usually, they meant people died. Seeing that I was overthinking it, Damon smiled briefly before prompting me with, “Come on,” and offering me his hand.

I let him help me through the window, and as my feet hit the ground, he dipped down to scoop me up into his arms. It made me laugh, and the almost innocent grin he gave me had me asking, “What’s got you in such a good mood?”

“Nothing.” 

“Did you get him?”

“Well, we blew up a storage room in the hospital, and he was in there.”

That didn’t necessarily mean that the guy was dead. We could follow up tomorrow. “That’s not it. What is it?”

“I liked how it felt coming home to you.”

Oh. No one had ever said that to me, and I suspected he’d never been able to say it and mean it either. “Think I might be the one at a loss for words this time.” 

After another brief grin, he asked, “How was the party?”

Looking around us as he headed into the woods, I answered, “I entertained myself, so not the worst. First party I’ve been to where the cops have come to shut it down, but I don’t think I’ll have to clear anything up with Liz tomorrow. It’s not like they took names.” It hit me that we were getting closer to the source of the smoke I could smell, and I turned my attention back to him. “Are we having another campfire?” 

Instead of telling me to stop trying to guess what he had planned, so I wouldn’t ruin the surprise, he smiled at my enthusiasm. “Have you eaten, or - ” I shook my head. “Good. I brought us food. It’s probably getting cold, but I know that most of the food you’ve been eating lately has been.”

He was right. It had been. I wouldn’t notice that it was too cold at all. “What’d you bring?”

“You’ll have to wait and see.” 

I could see the flames through the trees up ahead and looked up at him to try and glean any clues on what I’d find when we got there. “How much time went into this?” 

He rolled his eyes. “You’re the most impatient person I’ve ever met.” There wasn’t an ounce of sincerity in any of that. He liked that I was guessing. 

As he brought us into the clearing where the fire was, I took in the sight and quickly asked, “Are we having a picnic?” 

“What does it look like?”

“It looks like a picnic at night, and that has my name written all over it.” Proud of himself, he put me down, and my feet landed on soft grass. There was a blanket over there where the basket was, I could tell that it was going to be far enough from the fire that I wouldn’t start burning up if I sat on it. That had to be intentional, which meant he’d put some thought in on even the smaller details. I saw a bag of marshmallows on the other side of the picnic basket and remembered that the last time we’d had a campfire, I’d said that I’d never had s’mores. I still hadn’t had any, and even though I hadn’t said it again, he remembered and was going to make sure I had them tonight along with whatever other things he’d brought. I looked up at him. “What is this?”

“This is what a first date is meant to be, Evie. It’s an audition. I’m supposed to be trying to impress you.” 

Klaus had a word with him, all right, but whatever he’d said must’ve been a lot different than what I’d thought it would be. He may not have given Damon the ideas of what to do, but he’d definitely told Damon that if he wanted to do this right, then he needed to remember what the heart of a good first date was. “I’ll try not to be impressed too easily, but I think you kind of had this in the bag when I saw the marshmallows.”

With a quick grin, he stuck his hand into a hole on the tree next to us where he must have put his phone, and the amplified opening chords of David Bowie’s _Heroes_ came out of the tree. Okay, that was a legitimate surprise, and he could see it when I looked up at him again. “You’re about to flip out, aren’t you?” 

Maybe? Just hearing this song brought me right back to the night of my birthday when he kissed me. Despite what happened right before that, it had been perfect, and this song was playing when it happened. Then a little later, he told me he loved me for the first time. Did that make this our song? He wasn’t just getting these things right because they came from moments that were important to me. They must’ve been as equally important to him too, and that seemed to make them have an even greater impact. It was a lot for me to process, so I did feel a little like running away for the first time since I’d been back, but he offered me his hand saying, “That’s what I thought. It’s a good thing that I’ve been waiting to collect on this one for a while now, so you can’t, because you definitely owe me.” 

It was with some minor hesitation that I took his hand, and I was glad I did, because it quickly became the greatest dance of my life. We were alone, so we had all the freedom in the world to do whatever we wanted, and what was it that we really wanted? Just this. He was king. I was queen, and we were heroes of our own stories, which probably made us villains half the time, but here that didn’t matter. There were no rules, no mistakes, and no staring eyes on us even when our dance slowed after 5 minutes. By the end, we were wrapped up in one another and just swaying back and forth. I’m not even sure I was aware of it when the music stopped. He wasn’t either. It took him a few minutes to murmur, “I’ve got more songs, but I’m good for now. You?” I nodded against his forehead, and he hesitated. “I think now might be a good time to have the talk.”

“It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”

A flicker of a smile, and he said, “That’s not the one I meant, and you know it . . . You fed me your blood.”

I leaned back to look up at him. “You needed vervain. I didn’t want him to compel you to leave and never come back.”

“I know, but now I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Because it tasted so awful with the vervain?” 

“More like well-seasoned with danger.”

He did like a taste of danger, didn’t he? “Well, did the curse make it rotten at all?”

“No.”

With a sigh I grumbled, “This isn’t like how my eyes suddenly went from toffee that gets stuck in your fangs to being like the pudding your Mom used to make, is it?”

It made him laugh. “A little, yeah . . . It’s less of a ham sandwich and more of a – “ I reached up to put my non-cut hand over his mouth, and he laughed again. 

“Is that why you want suddenly want to have another campfire night . . . because that’s what we were doing when you tasted – “ 

He shook his head, and gently removed my hand to say, “It’s what made me think of it, but that’s not why I wanted to have another one. I know that it took Tyler biting me for me to see how I feel more clearly, but I don’t know when it started. I don’t think it was just one thing that did it, but I know the first one of these we had was one of them, and – “ Standing up on my toes, I kissed his uncertainty away. He hadn’t done anything wrong by choosing this place. Resting his forehead on mine a minute later, he said, “It was for you too, wasn’t it,” like he was sure of that now, and I nodded. His boyish grin briefly returned, and his voice mellowed as he said, “Promise me you won’t give me your blood again.”

“What if you’re dying?”

“Stop trying to give yourself wiggle room. I don’t want your blood.”

“Because you do?”

With a subtle shake of his head, he answered, “No. What I want is to never lose control with you. Even if I didn’t lose control, then I won’t be just another vampire that adds to the scars that used to be on your neck, and if Isobel managed to never bite you, then I sure as hell can.”

If that was his intention, it lined up with what I wanted, but I wasn’t sure that if he’d had my blood at any point before today he’d be having as strong of a reaction to it as he seemed to be now. It was what happened this morning mostly and then the idea of the date and me basically marking my territory in front of Klaus and my sister even if my intention was to protect him. Blood and love had gotten a little scrambled for him, because he’d been overloaded today. “Your wires are a little crossed right now?”

“I’ve got it under control.”

“I know, or you wouldn’t have brought me out here, and you want to keep it that way. No more temptation . . . I get it, but – “

“If I’m dying, there is no other blood, and even with the vervain, it’s the only way to save me, you can, because I know that’s what you’re angling for me to say . . . but other than that, promise me.”

“I promise.” 

That good mood of his crept its way back to the surface as he exhaled another soft laugh. “Then I look forward to passing my audition.”

“Yeah, and what part is it that you want?”

“It’s the role of a lifetime . . . but tonight, I’ll settle for being the dishonorable Mr. Salvatore seducing the lovely Miss Eve into sullying her honor out here in the woods.”

Yeah, he’d definitely liked that game a lot more than he’d ever let me know, and now he was turning it into another kind of game. “Why, Mr. Salvatore, whatever do you mean? You’re the one who is meant to protect my honor.”

Licking his bottom lip, he smiled before saying, “Miss Eve, when I am done, it will be you who comes to me first for a change.”

He seemed pretty confident of that. Let’s see if he was right. “Challenge accepted.”


	17. The Night I Lost My Parents

I heard a knock at the door and went to answer it, not knowing who it might be, but appreciative that whoever it was hadn’t just waltzed right on in here. It could be Caroline. It could be the post or a parcel. Opening the door, I found none of those things. “Oh, uh . . . Hi, Bonnie. Who are you here to see?” Stefan and Damon were both out, but I could point her in the right direction if I knew which one she wanted.

Looking as awkward as I felt, she said, “Um. You actually.” Briefly pointing her thumb over her shoulder, she added, “Elena and I were going to go to Whitmore College to see the Occult Studies Professor, and she said that you were thinking of majoring in that, so she . . . we were thinking that maybe you might want to come too.”

What? I looked past her towards the car to see Elena sitting nervously inside, while she pretended like she wasn’t listening to everything we said, and for the first time in a few days, I found myself wondering if this was really happening. “Don’t you two have school?”

“Yeah, but it’s Friday, and we have permission to go on a college tour.”

“You two aren’t planning to drive me out of town to try and kill me, are you?”

She tried not to smile as she waved off my concern. “Nah, we’ve both already killed you once. Why drive you out of town to do it again?”

Being able to joke about it was on par with apologizing for it in my books. It was unexpected and made me exhale a laugh, which seemed to make her relax a little. “Look, thanks for the offer, but - ” 

“Do you already have plans?”

“I was sort of thinking I might drop in on Klaus to see what he’s scheming, because something is going on with him.”

Tossing an apprehensive look towards the car, Bonnie asked, “Well, do you have to do it today, or can it wait until tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.” I wouldn’t know how urgent it was until I did some investigating.

Her eyes briefly narrowed, while she tried to determine whether I was being difficult on purpose, and she must’ve decided I wasn’t. “Well, if you think it could wait, then maybe it’s something we could help you with tomorrow . . . Please? I know it’d mean a lot to her.”

With a shallow breath, I glanced back at the car again. Leaning forward, I whispered, “Why are you the one asking me?”

“She, um – “ Pausing to look behind her, Bonnie stepped into the house and closed the door before saying, “Okay, the truth? She wants you to come. She wants you to see what college might be like, because she knows that you’re on the fence about it, and she wants to convince you to go, but she’s also hoping that the guy who took over my Gram’s classes will know something about curses, so he can help find a way to get rid of it. She knows that right now she’s volatile, and you always are. What happened at the funeral the other day scared her, and then Stefan told her that you’d actually been in a lot of pain when it happened. She feels really bad about that, and she doesn’t want it to happen again, so she asked me to be like a buffer between you two, and since you and I are supposed to be trying to get along, I agreed to do it.”

Seriously, what was happening right now? Didn’t any of that seem strange to Bonnie? “And that starts now?”

Flashing an awkward smile, Bonnie said, “Apparently so.”

Yeah, she thought it was weird too, but she wasn’t going to say that to me. “Who’s idea was it to go on this trip?”

“Well, I was going to go anyway, and she asked if she could come along.”

“And then asked if I could come along too?” Bonnie nodded, and I was still confused, but now I was just making her uncomfortable. To put her out of her misery, I finally said, “Okay. I’ll go.”

A sincere smile spread across her face. “Really?”

“Was there some kind of alien invasion last night that I missed?” And now we were back to awkward, because I’d kind of meant that, and she did not know how to respond. If there’d actually been some kind of body snatching and replacing that’d happened, then clone-Bonnie wouldn’t tell me anyway. “Never mind.” With a sigh, I grabbed my sunglasses off the table next to the door and slid them on my face as I said, “Should be interesting. If I can make it through today, then I might be able to convince myself that I can make it through a day at a school. Just make sure that no matter how much I irk you, you don’t touch me . . . If witches weren’t immune to the talisman, I’m guessing you aren’t immune to this.”

“Why would you irk me?”

“It’s what I do.”

“I’m sure you could resist it if you tried.”

“Yeah, but then I’d be changing myself for the people around me, and I don’t really want to do that.” Opening the door, I said, “Let’s go.”

She saw me reach down to grab my umbrella and halted outside the door. “It’s overcast. Do you really need that?”

Closing the door behind me, I answered, “I seem to be able to go a little bit longer if it’s cloudy, but I don’t know what it’s going to be like wherever we’re going or if it’s going to clear up.”

“And if it does clear up, you’ll – “

“Use the umbrella when I’m out of the car, and mind where I’m sitting in the backseat.. I just can’t sit in direct sunlight for too long even if it’s coming in through a window. That’s why the house is all decked out the way it is right now.”

Noticing how the curtains were drawn across all the windows, she looked at me again. “Wow, you really shouldn’t be going anywhere right now. Does Elena know about – “

“Yep.”

“Then why would she still ask you to come with us?”

Why was Elena asking me to go on a drive out of town in the middle of the day when the whole idea of Bonnie being a buffer was to keep me from getting sick? I didn’t know, but she was, and she was acting like a weirdo, so I going to keep an eye on her. “I guess it’s because of what you said.”

“What’s the longest you’ve been able to go outside?”

“Without pushing myself or being emotionally drained? I don’t know. I can’t seem to leave the house without one or both happening. Under the umbrella, I can go longer under any circumstance, so it’ll probably be the same in the car if the sun decides to make an appearance today.”

“But it’s a long trip.”

“Good. I need to test my limits.”

“Maybe today isn’t the best – “

Opening the back door, I said, “If not now, then when?” before climbing into the car. After making sure there were no sunbeams falling directly on me in the middle, I sat back and looked in the passenger seat. “Hey.”

Glancing back at me, Elena gave me and awkward, “Hey,” and I asked, “So, is Caroline coming?” as Bonnie got into the driver’s seat. They shared a look, but neither one of them answered. “You guys forgot her, didn’t you?”

Elena was quick to deny it. “What? No, we – “

Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I flicked my thumb over the screen and looked down at it. “I’ll just give her a call to – “

“Can’t you do something without her for once?!” 

I looked at Elena, and my shoulders fell. I’d hoped that I’d been wrong about what I noticed last night. What was causing it, I didn’t know. It was different than when she’d felt guilty about forgetting me in her decision to save Matt. With that, she’d felt the need to hover more. Whatever underlying issue was causing this, it was starting to express itself as jealousy. Lifting my phone, I tried again. I mean she was supposed to be the compassionate one, right? That’s what Stefan kept saying, and it’s why he had her on an animal diet. Certainly didn’t make her compassionate to the woodland creatures roaming the property, but I guess she was supposed to be with people. “But she’ll be hurt if she isn’t even asked, especially if I’m here, and she isn’t.”

“Let me guess. You think we’re bullying her too now?”

“I wouldn’t call it bullying, but if what you want is to exclude her, then I think I’ll stay here.”

I reached for the door handle, and Bonnie said, “Wait.” Watching Elena, she added, “We should call her. It’ll be fun. A road trip with just the girls.” Yeah, and Bonnie was starting to realize that she could use the back up. “Come on, it would hurt her feelings if we didn’t at least ask.”

Tossing me a look in the back before she sat forward, Elena capitulated. “All right, fine, but it’s not like it would stop her if Eve weren’t coming with us.”

I dialed Caroline, but it went to voicemail, and I briefly wondered if that would’ve happened had one of the other two called, but then I thought that this might be what was needed to make her get in touch. I hadn’t exactly reached out to her either. I’d been mostly waiting on her, but I’d given her enough time. We needed to get this back on track. I left her a message to tell her what was happening, and now the ball was definitely in her court.

I was putting my phone back in my pocket as Bonnie pulled out of the drive, and it rang again. When I saw who it was, I almost thought about not answering it, but I really didn’t want to start tip toeing around Elena, because it’d set a bad precedent once I did. “Hello?"

_”Hi . . . Eve?”_

Elena looked back at me when she recognized the voice, and I diverted my attention out the window. “Hi Rebekah. Feeling better?”

_”Much . . . Um, I wanted to say thank you for staying with me through the worst of it last night.”_

“Well, I couldn’t exactly let you tear through our classmates even though most of them probably deserve it.”

_”Some more than others . . . and I was actually wondering if you might be willing to help my new friend and I with something if you’re feeling up for it?”_

She had a new friend? The notion made me smile. She couldn’t have had many of those in her life with her brothers scaring any potentials away. “Sure, but I’m doing something else today. Do you want to stop by the house tomorrow?”

_”Can you make sure we have the place to ourselves?”_

Well, it was Damon and Stefan’s house, so I couldn’t guarantee it, but I knew what she was really asking. “I’ll keep them from ruining this for you.”

_”Great! Let me check to see if she’s free, and I’ll get back you.”_

“Sounds good . . . I’ll talk to you later.”

_”Bye, Eve.”_

My thumb ended the call, and Elena said, “You know she’s a big part of the reason you had the problems you did at the start of school, right?”

I finally got my phone back into my pocket and subconsciously did something I used to do with both parents to keep from saying something that would set them off. _Inhale. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Exhale. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10._ The moment I realized what I’d done, icy tendrils of panic started to make their way across my chest. I couldn’t go back to that. I just couldn’t. 

I looked around to try and find something else to talk about and landed on Bonnie. “So . . . Bonnie - ”

“Whatever you’re about to say, think about it really hard, and then if you decide it’s something you still want to say, get back to her on it.”

Goddamnit! That’s what I’d just done not to say what I’d been planning to say in response to her snide comment. Slouching back in my seat, I grumbled about it in my head. I mean, I understood that the anger she felt at Rebekah yesterday had been transferred onto me last night, and that anger at me was for entirely different reasons than she’d been angry with Rebekah, but was she really just going to start taking things I’d said that had hurt or annoyed her when she was human and throw them back at me now? And why the hell did she have Bonnie stop to get me if that was the case? Ugh, baby vampires sucked so much. The only one I’d ever seen who was any good at it was Caroline, and where was she right now? Crossing my arms over my chest, I looked out the window. “You’re gonna have to stop stealing my material, or - “

“I’m not arguing with you today, Eve.”

“I didn’t start it.”

Turning in a huff to look back at me, Elena said, “Yeah? Then what were you going to say to Bonnie?”

I looked out the window again, considered it, and decided that I really wasn’t going to twist myself into knots to placate her, but I also didn’t want to make myself sick. It wouldn’t be a true test of how far I could go in a car on a cloudy day if I did. Thinking she’d won, Elena smirked as she turned back around to face the front, and I threw the back of her head an evil look from behind my shades, because she may not want to argue with me, so she could keep me from turning into a puddle of black goo again, but it sure was pissing me off and a lot more than if she were to argue with me. After about 30 seconds, Bonnie sighed and said, “What were you going to say, Eve?” Elena’s head snapped to her left, and Bonnie shrugged. “What? I can take it.”

“But you shouldn’t have to take it, Bon.”

Quickly losing her own patience, Bonnie snapped, “You’re the one who wanted her to come, so you could help her. What are you doing right now?”

“She can’t help it.” Bonnie relaxed before looking back at me in the rear view mirror. “Mom used to do the same thing.”

“Would you stop comparing me to Isobel?!”

“I mean there are similarities. Have I ever told you – “

“No, and I don’t want to hear it.”

Bonnie stared at her best friend and shook her head, like she had no idea who Elena was, so I said, “She’s still the Elena you know, and she’s not. Her – “

“Would you stop talking about me, like I’m not here?”

Putting her hand out in Elena’s direction as a signal to stop, Bonnie said, “Let her finish,” so I used the opening to explain. “Her emotions are like an internal hurricane. They feel that powerful to her and are just as uncontrollable. Being able to tame them will take time, and her emotions surrounding me are pretty tumultuous. Those are magnified now, and it makes her even angrier. If I don’t stop talking to you soon, they will manifest as jealousy, like they have with Katherine, Alec, Caroline, Rebekah, and even Stefan, but she won’t take it out on you, because you’re her best friend, and she won’t take it out on them either, but she can’t help taking it out on me.” Resting my head against the seat, I added, “She’ll calm down in a little while.” 

Bonnie paused before her eyes flicked in Elena’s direction. Judging by that look, I’d say she felt like she was sitting next to a cobra ready to strike, but she still asked, “Is that how Isobel was?” 

She wanted Elena to stop and think about whether she wanted to be like Mom, didn’t she? Well, I could help with that one. “Yes and no . . . she was possessive, but it was a little different.”

Glancing back at me in the mirror again, Bonnie asked, “Did she ever hurt you?”

“Not physically.” Her shoulders fell, and I watched as her expression changed, but she hadn’t been wrong to try that approach. “They stopped getting along.” Bonnie looked at me and shook her head, like I didn’t have to get into it, but I tilted my head in Elena’s direction. Elena might be staring out the passenger side window, but she was listening to every word and not arguing back. If she felt insecure around me, then knowing more about me would quell that long enough to get us where we were going. I mean it’s what she’d said last night, wasn’t it? She’d wanted to know why everyone knew more about me than she did.

“It was a long time before she turned. I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s because every time I went to his house, I’d hunt, and then I’d come back a little different. She felt like she was losing her little girl . . . She thought about moving to keep me away from him, but she also knew that all I had were the two of them, and she couldn’t do that to me . . . It’s why she turned . . . She thought if she could protect me, then he wouldn’t have to keep taking me out and that it would show me that not all vampires are what he was teaching me they were. There were probably two reasons for that, one was that it would make me think that becoming a vampire was an option instead of just dying in the sacrifice, but also because she wanted to steer my path in a different direction.”

Without looking away from the window, Elena murmured, “I thought she wanted more information on Klaus and the sacrifice that she couldn’t get being a human.”

“She did, but people can have more than one reason for doing something, and the day she came back as a ghost she told me that what had made her so desperate to do it was that she felt like Dad was taking me away from her in bits and pieces, and she couldn’t take me away from him, because she knew I needed my Dad too.”

I still felt pretty awful about that, so I took a slow breath, and when Elena didn’t argue, continued, “When she did turn, all of that turned into an intense possessiveness over me, particularly with him. The night he brought me back to drop me off with her and we found out what she’d done . . . I guess you could call that night the biggest family secret the three of us had, because we never spoke about it with one another again, but - ”

“Does Damon know about it?” 

Him too? Huffing out a sigh, I rolled my eyes as I looked out the window. “Yep.”

“But – “

“Dad brought parts of it up with Damon when he was trying to convince me not to be in the sacrifice, and I filled Damon in on the rest later . . . after I read Dad’s letter.”

Looking back at me, she quickly said, “You never said John changed his mind.“

“I did when I was talking to him at the funeral, but you clearly weren’t paying attention. He had to change his mind. I think he always planned to sacrifice himself for me, and that’s why he really raised me to be able to take care of myself when he was gone, but Mom screwed it up by letting Klaus know about me. I told you that if that happened, the witchy predictions were that Klaus would’ve used me instead of Jenna, and there was no way for Dad to bring me back from that. He went from being able to save both of us to losing me, and he gave Damon permission to do whatever it took to keep me out of it, but Katherine played her part too.” Elena opened her mouth, and I snapped, “I don’t know why she did it, but I’m sure she had a reason.”

“All this time, you’ve given Bonnie a hard time about it when you knew – “ 

Touching her arm, Bonnie said, “We’ve talked about it, Elena. She and I are good.” Elena looked at her, and Bonnie added, “Really,” before glancing back at me to say, “What happened the night your Mom turned?”

She was actually a pretty good mediator. Just her calling my Mom, my Mom, instead of Isobel seemed to soothe some of the frustration I’d started feeling. “It was a disaster. They started arguing. He didn’t understand how she could do that to me or him, and she started to vamp out, so he tried to stake her. She threw him into the piano she’d been saving for years to get me, and it was destroyed. He’d lost his stake in the fall, but he picked up some of the wooden shrapnel, and she wouldn’t stop staring at the piano. I think she was in shock, because that piano had meant everything to both of us, so it was like a symbol of what our life had been, and all it took was a second for it all to come crashing down . . . but even though I knew that the Mom I’d known was gone, I couldn’t let him kill the one I had left, so I stepped in front of her at the last second, and he got me instead. The look on his face . . . “

I’d never forget that look. I think that’s the moment I may have actually lost my Dad too. “You hear some parents say, ‘It hurts me, more than it hurts you,’ and I saw the truth of that for the split second that he thought he’d just killed me. He’d used that move on plenty of vampires, because it worked, but I’d deflected it just enough with my forearm that he only got me in the side, and when he realized that, his micro expressions started to change in a way he couldn’t control. He’d never get over being the one to do that to me, and I’d forced him into it, but worse than that, he felt like I’d chosen her over him even though she was a vampire. I hadn’t, but he believed I did, and he was so desperate for that not to be true that when she was more drawn to my blood than trying to kill him in his moment of weakness, he took a step back and waited for her to prove to me that she was like the others.”

Yeah, just talking about it now reminded me that I’d done the same thing to him the night of the dinner party, and he’d reacted the same way - by trying to show me what Damon was by goading Damon into attacking him. With a subtle shake of my head in disappointment with myself, I focused on the hem of my sleeve as I said, “She didn’t do it. She forced herself to turn away from me and told him to leave. He said that if he did, then he was taking me with him, so he could bring me to the hospital, but her motherly instincts had kicked in by then. He was not going to take me away from her. She threw him out a window instead of killing him, and it wasn’t because she wanted me to see that she wasn’t what both he and I thought she was. She wanted me to believe that she was better than him, because she wouldn’t take him from me the way he’d tried to take her . . . but she didn’t stop either. She lost it. She already knew turning was a mistake, and the guilt she felt for replacing the Mom I’d known, along with her anger at my Dad, and the blood lust she had over my blood drove her to obliterate what was left of the piano because of what it represented. This was how it was going to be now. That life was gone. No more piano, and it was too loud anyway.”

“It is what it is?” 

“I don’t know when I picked that up, but it’s certainly a philosophy that helped me survive that night anyway.” I glanced towards Elena, and she had her head bowed, but it didn’t look like she had anything else to say, so I said, “After that, she went into my room and started destroying my keyboards. While she was busy doing that, I crawled to my hunting bag. I kept my red keyboard with me everywhere I went, so it was still in there from hunting with Dad. He’s the one who got it for me on my 2nd birthday, and it was my first one, so I knew she’d want it the most when she remembered it. By the time she did, I had it hidden and had used one of my stakes to make the hole in my side a little bit bigger, so she’d pay more attention to the blood than trying to find the keyboard, and then I convinced her to take me to the hospital, but she was really aggressive with anyone who came near me. It went beyond protective. It was definitely possessive."

"I had to talk her down, and after that, it kept happening whenever she didn’t like the way someone spoke to me or looked at me. It wasn’t when they were being rude. It was when they were being nice and showing even an ounce of interest in me, and she’d cover for it by trying to make me think that she’d just seen something in them that I hadn’t. ‘Let people think they’re using you, but don’t actually let them use you’ . . . I mean I knew they weren’t, but I wasn’t going to say that . . . The only one she never did that to was Katherine. She’d be awful to Dad anytime he came to pick me up. Then she’d send me off with him knowing that he’d take it out on me because of how bitter he’d become. It was her way of making sure I came back to her . . . The price I had to pay for that wasn’t a factor.”

All was quiet. I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes to help settle my stomach. I’d never cried about the night she turned. Who has time to cry when you have to start babysitting your vampire Mom, but just because I had never and would never cry about it, didn’t mean that I still didn’t feel grief, guilt, and sadness about it. All three might be better than anger, but none of them were a good mix with my current condition. “I’m doing it to you now too, aren’t I? That’s what you’re saying. In order to help me not feel like a terrible sister, you’re having to pay a price for – “

“Pretty much.”

“And last night you said – “

“That I didn’t want to go through having to walk on eggshells around someone 24/7 again? Yeah, I did.”

“I think I know what you meant now.”

I hadn’t thought she knew she was being awful while she was. She’d needed to calm down first. “Good.”

“Eve?”

“Hm?”

“The red keyboard – “

“Yes, it’s the one I burned at his funeral.”

“I’m sorry.” 

For what? Was it for how she’d acted at the funeral? Was it just a blanket ‘sorry for your loss’? Or was it because of how she’d been acting last night and today? I went with the last one. “Don’t be. I was going to say that Bonnie looked pretty normal considering she went full Wicked Witch of the East Coast.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“Well, I guess now you’ll never know.”


	18. Whitmore

_Why aren’t you answering your phone?_

It wasn’t from Caroline, but it was a text I’d been waiting to get just so I could text this back. _I’m in class._ It made me smile.

 _Then why are you replying?_ True. I never had my phone on in normal class, but this was a little different. Before I could respond, I got a second text. _School’s out._ I waited for it, and about 10 seconds later _Where are you?_ came through.

My eyes flicked to the bottom of the class where that creepy professor guy that Bonnie and Elena thought was hot pontificated on witches. I didn’t like him at all, and I didn’t know why. There was just something about him. Maybe it was his eyes. He knew more than he pretended to know. That was obvious, but there was also this cockiness he had, because he knew the truth, and his students didn’t. He liked having that over them, and it almost turned this entire lesson into a joke on them, but he was the only one laughing. Whatever his cockiness was hiding, it wasn’t insecurity, and an entire lecture on the wonderfulness of witches when he knew Bonnie was coming? Give me a break. 

If he was the head Occult studies professor here, then I would not be going to Whitmore College. _Ruling out Whitmore. How do you feel about a Duke or New Orleans visit soon?_

My Mom had always wanted to go to Duke. They had a good Occult program, and it wasn’t far away. If Damon stayed in Mystic Falls, I could drive back and forth almost as easily from there as I could from here, and the New Orleans program was supposed to be even better, so it was my wild card pick. _Who is with you?_

And that’s where the problem was going to be. _". . ."_

_What does that mean?_

It meant I didn’t want to lie to Damon, and I didn’t want him to freak out either, so I wasn’t going to answer that, but he could figure it out if he wanted. He did. He just didn’t go to me for confirmation, because he knew I wouldn’t give it to him. I flinched along with my two cohorts and half of the people on this side of the room when Elena’s phone started buzzing. The entire class ground to a halt to watch her, including the professor, and I would have found it mildly amusing, because nobody was looking at me, but instead of ending the call, she had to go and answer it. “Hello?” 

Bonnie and I shared a look from either side of her, and Bonnie touched her arm to get her attention, while she hissed, “Elena, put it away!”

“Yeah, Bonnie, and I . . . Okay.” Handing it out to me, she said, “Damon wants to talk to you,” and my eyebrows rose. 

Why the hell would she do that? Now people were looking at me. A knot started to tighten in my stomach, and I would’ve probably just hung up and taken deep breaths until it worked itself out, because I’d been really trying all day to manage this curse, but then the creepy professor had to get involved. “Don’t keep whoever it is waiting on our account. It’s not as if it’s interrupting – “

Instant anger. “A terrible lesson?” Things can turn so fast when they’re tied to your emotions. The burning, stabbing pain in my stomach caught me a little off guard. I needed to get out of there. I’d made sure I was at the end of the row, so there was less chance of me touching anyone. Finding a clear path out wasn’t a problem. Taking the phone as I got to my feet, I added, “Pretty sure it is, and this rudimentary nonsense isn’t worth my time.” 

Bonnie’s eyes widened in shock horror, “Eve! What - ,” 

I gave her the courtesy of acknowledging her with a look and saw the moment she understood. She made a 'shooing' motion with her hands, like I should go, but then Elena started apologizing to the professor, grabbed my arm that was nearest to her, and using her superior strength, tugged me back into my seat. It added to my anger. Not only had she just manhandled me, but I did not want to have a full meltdown here. Leaning into Elena’s face, I growled, “Let go of me,” and my murderous look along with Bonnie pulling on her other arm, made her release me. I was up, like a flash. 

Without stopping to look at Bonnie this time, I quickly said, “Keep her here,” and started to make my way to the door, but with the eyes of the room on me, each step got a little harder to take. It’s not something I ever would’ve known if it weren’t for this curse, but apparently, I did get embarrassed and just cloaked myself in anger as a shield. Not a good armor for me to have right now.

By the time I got to the door, I was struggling to stay upright, but somehow managed it and tossed a flippant wave in the professor’s direction saying, “Please, proceed, and do feel free to poke fun at my expense as soon as I’m gone, so you can get this three ring circus back on track, like the good showman, you think you are.”

Crashing through the doors, I made it about three feet before falling to one of my knees. Curling in on myself, I tried to breathe through it, but it was a struggle. I needed to get somewhere safe. Wrapping an arm around my midsection, I forced myself to get back on my feet and stumbled a step or two before lifting the phone to my ear. “You still with me?” It’s what he’d done when I was hunting Mason, wasn’t it? He’d stayed on the line.

_”I didn’t think she was going to answer.”_

“Well, she did.”

_And I didn’t tell her to do that.”_

“I didn’t think you did. There’s something wrong with her.”

I passed my first set of windows and blanched away from the light with an unexpected whimper. I didn’t know if it was still cloudy or not, but either way, the sunlight felt like it was burning me the way warm water did. Goddamn anger and direct sunlight certainly didn't mix. More pain. More anger. I dropped to one knee again, took a couple of shallow breaths, and pushed off the ground with my foot to make myself keep going. This time, I ducked down to get past the windows. When I was on the other side, I mumbled, “I’m still here.“

_”What was that?”_

“Bad sunburn.”

_”I’m already on my way.”_

“Need to find a way to stop this myself.”

 _”Just find somewhere dark for now.”_ I found a stairwell leading down, and stopped when I saw that the only way to the basement would be past what seemed like ginormous windows. Bad idea. Bathroom? I went into the first one I saw, but there were some people in there, so I headed back out and eventually ended up in a janitor’s closet of some kind. I pulled the door closed behind me and finally let myself collapse onto the ground. _”You still there?”_

“Just.”

_”Keep talking to me . . . So Whitmore’s a no, then?”_

Curling myself into the fetal position at just the thought of that stupid professor and his stupid classroom, I gritted out, “At this point, I think I’m done with school.”

_”Come on, you don’t mean that.”_

“I think I might.”

 _“We can do that thing I talked about where I compel you into a graduation somewhere, and I’ll get you into whatever college you want . . . could be anywhere . . . or we could go protect the gorillas in Gabon or –_ “ 

With tears in my eyes, I mumbled, “I want all of it Damon . . . everything, but it all seems so far away from where I am right now . . . stupid janitor closet . . . and it hurts, and I’m so tired. Why does it always make me so tired?”

_”Because you’re fighting it.”_

“I’m winning though, right?”

 _”Yeah, Evie, you’re kicking it’s ass. That’s why you’re locked in a broom closet right now.”_ I snorted, and his tone was noticeably less strained as he asked, _“Was that a laugh?”_

“Pretty sure it was.”

_”And?”_

“It hurts a little less.”

 _”So . . . do you want me to keep insulting you, or . . . “_ I exhaled another laugh, and he said, _”Actually, I forgot to tell you. A courier stopped by the house earlier?”_

“Yeah?”

_”Yeah, it’s why I was trying to find you. I wanted to tell you that you were wrong.”_

“Well, that is a special occasion. We should mark it in the calendar.”

_”No, what we should be marking down in the calendar is Saturday.”_

“Oh?”

 _”Yeah, it’s the annual vampire convention. I finally got my invitation.”_

“But Saturday isn’t the Winter Solstice.”

_”They moved it this year.”_

“Why would they do that?”

_”It might have something to do with a huntress who shows up every Winter Solstice.”_

“A huntress? That sounds like it’d be bad for business.”

_”It is. She keeps depriving vampires near the door of their desserts. Just takes their heads and disappears before anyone can stop her.”_

“I wonder who it is.”

 _”I don’t think she has a name.”_ I chuckled and felt the tension in my body recede a little more. _“So, do you want to be my plus one?”_

“Do you get a plus one that isn't a vampire to the vampire convention?”

_”Of course I do. I’m Damon Salvatore. It says right here on my invitation that I can do anything I want, and that includes bringing whoever I want.”_

“Damon Salvatore, huh?”

_”Yeah, I may have intercepted your letter advising them of a name change.”_

After a short giggle, I asked, “Then are you sure you want to bring me? There’s a very good chance they’ll all be calling you Fluffy by the end of the night.”

 _“Then I’ll kill every last one of them, and my date will help me.”_ I smiled, and he said, _“Are you feeling better?”_

“It doesn’t hurt anymore. Now, I’m just tired . . . You don’t have to come here though. It’s like 2-hours away.”

_”Not with the way I drive . . . How was today going before this?”_

“Up and down.”

_”Then I’ll come get you, and you can end it on an up.”_

“You don’t have to keep coming to my rescue, Damon.”

_”Don’t think of it as being rescued. Think of it as me fixing one of your mistakes, a huge, colossal mistake.”_

“If it saved those people the talisman killed, then it wasn’t a mistake.”

_”I think we’re talking about two different things. I meant you leaving again in the middle of the day and with the two people you shouldn’t be anywhere near until we get this cleared up, but now that you mention it, yeah, you messing around with dark magic you don’t understand was a huge mistake.“_

I grumbled, “It’s giving you more time with me, isn’t it?” and there was a long pause.

 _”Point taken.”_ His acquiescence made me relax, and then he added, _”We’ll figure this out. If you don’t want to go to that coven, because you think they’ll try to kill you, then Klaus will let us know the right witch to go to for this kind of thing, and – “_

“I wouldn’t hold my breath on that. He didn’t follow through on my bouncy castle.”

_”Yeah . . . about that . . . ”_

“What did you do?” Silence, and I felt the need to quickly say, “And just so you know . . . before it was withholding information, which we both know I kind of have to live with because I’m such a pain in the ass about doing it myself.” I heard him exhale a laugh and added, “But now, I’m outright asking you, and a lie is a lie is a lie if you don’t tell me the truth. What did you do to my bouncy castle?”

“ _Could just hang up . . . walk away . . . generally not answer. Think it’s on the next page out of the Book of Eve.”_

“Damon, where’s my bouncy castle fit for a princess?”

He snorted again. _”I might’ve thrown it away.”_

“When did he send it?!”

_”Right after you left to chase down the coven you don’t want to see again.”_

So it was the day Klaus was planning to leave and then ultimately tried to drain Elena of all her blood, but it was also the day after I’d helped him deal with his mother, which is why he’d sent it as a parting gift and early in the day before all those other bad things happened. “I actually earned that, Damon.”

_”We couldn’t have that thing in the yard. It would’ve been the size of the house, Eve.”_

“I bet it was magnificent, and you what, poked a hole in it while they were inflating it and just threw it away?”

 _”You know, if I was anyone else, I might be troubled by the fact that you’re more upset about that than me not telling you that I killed someone.”_

“You may not have told me, but I knew about you murdering Jessica. I didn’t know about the bouncy castle.”

 _”It’s a very light shade of grey! Killing her was black. No grey about it. If you could still get with me after that, then you can forgive me for a bouncy castle.”_

“But there are just some things in life that you want. They may seem frivolous and stupid, but you want them anyway, and that was one of mine. Besides, forgiveness from me for Jessica dying doesn’t count for much, because I’m not her family, but even if I do, then it does not give you license to be a dick and break my stuff. Now, I’m going to have to use all your best bourbon as molotov cocktails, and I know where all your hiding places are.”

I heard him laugh. _”I’ll get you something better, okay?”_

“Better than something the size of the house?”

_”He only made sure it was that big to say he’s the better man, and you know it . . . but the point is that he will follow through on a contact we can use.”_

“Maybe, but he’s going to hold onto whatever contacts he has until he needs to distract us from what he’s really up to now.”

_“Did I miss something?”_

“I don’t know. I was planning to investigate it today, but I got side-tracked by this little nightmare . . . Why is it – “ 

I was interrupted when the door to the closet suddenly opened. Shrinking back from the unexpected light, I put my hand over my eyes and heard Elena whisper shout, “I found her.” Then there were three silhouettes in the doorway. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I blinked, and then groaned when I saw the professor was one of them. They’d told him all about the curse hadn’t they? Elena still hadn’t learned not to tell people my secrets, and neither one of them apparently had the right read on this guy. They weren’t going to listen to anything I said about it either. I could tell that already. They’d really been taken in by that lecture of his. Looking down at the phone, I sighed before bringing it back to my ear, and said, “Thanks . . . I gotta go. Think I have some damage control to do,” before hanging up.


	19. Alarm Bells

“Eve, please?!” 

Turning away from Elena with my eyes still closed, I reached out for the back of the chair I remembered seeing when we walked into the office, found it, and knew I was only about three feet from the door. “What part of ‘no,’ do you not understand, Elena? How about, ‘No,’ in Spanish? ‘No.’ Or maybe Bulgarian? ‘Ne.’ I know. It’s politeness you want, isn’t it? Does ‘No, thank you, I’m good,’ work?” 

Using her vampire speed to get in front of me, she blocked my exit, and I heard Bonnie say, “Elena, if she wants to go, then let her. She doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to do.”

Elena remained determined. “But she should at least try it. Anything has to be better than what happened earlier.”

The second that hypnosis had been brought up as a solution to helping me control my anger, I’d shut my eyes and hoped like hell that he hadn’t already started trying to do it in some way that I hadn’t noticed. He was a slippery snake of a man. I’d managed to get this far without anyone being the wiser, because I was still wearing my sunglasses and had gotten quite good at getting around without my eyes lately, which meant I could observe with my ears to figure out what his deal was and wait for my moment to leave while maintaining the appearance of having sight, but when Elena started to push it, I decided to get out of there sooner rather than later. Truth be told, I was more than a little concerned that she and that professor were going to try and force it on me if this went on much longer. 

Now, she was penning me in and making it difficult for me to exit, which lent a little credence to my concerns, and I really didn’t want to have to hurt her. I was going to try and make her back down using only my words, but if she persisted, then I had no choice but to show her a side of me that I didn’t want her to see. “Do you really think that someone, like me, who is as careful as I am about compulsion, is going to let anyone fuck with my mind? No way. Nuh uh. Get out of my way, dickhead.” 

“Eve.” She sounded hurt. I bet she was pouting. 

“The mere suggestion that my brain needs to be rewired just to make things easier for you is – “

“Not me. You.”

“I’m not the one trying to change me. I’m fine with me the way I am . . . Seriously, get out of my way, or I’m going to stake you.”

“She means that, and you do not want to be on the wrong end of one of her stakes, Elena. I’d move if I were you.” I had said that I didn’t need to be rescued, and I didn’t really need him to do it now, but I sure was glad that Damon got there when he did. It gave me a chance to shove past Elena without having to stab her. Stepping into the hall, I dodged to my right, and when my back was against the wall, I finally opened my eyes to make sure it was him and not some figment of my imagination that the professor had put there. I didn’t want anyone messing with my head, and just the thought that the guy in there, someone who clearly knew his way around the occult, could have done that without me knowing it really upset me. It’s not like I had any way of protecting myself from another human doing it the way I could protect myself from vampires or witches. 

Watching my reaction, Damon’s eyes narrowed as his attention went back into the room. “What’d I miss?” 

A chair scraped across the floor from the other side of the room, and I took a few more steps away from the door, so I wouldn’t be anywhere near the professor’s line of sight when he stepped forward to offer Damon his hand. I did not want that guy pulling off some final phase of a Vulcan mind trick now that I’d gotten out of his lair. “Dr. Shane, and you must be Damon Salvatore.” 

Salvatore? I didn’t tell him that. Nobody had mentioned Damon, while we’d be in there. When Damon called while we were in that lecture, Elena had only said that it was Damon. Either Bonnie and Elena had filled the good professor in on Damon when they were busy telling him about what ailed me, or he’d been looking into our town and it’s vampire population in addition to our local witch. Yes, he was an Occult Studies professor, and that might explain it, but my instincts were sending me all kinds of alarm bells about the guy. 

Damon looked down at the professor’s hand while he sized him up, and the professor was smart enough to take his hand back. “We were just discussing the fascinating curse Eve has.”

Damon’s response was a dry, “Fascinating is one word for it.”

Turning to the side to glance back at Bonnie, his real audience, the professor said, “Yes, well . . . my understanding is that it’s tied to her emotions, particularly wrath, so if we could get to the heart of all her anger, we might be able to do something to lessen the impact it has on her.”

“And how are you planning to do that?”

The Professor looked to Damon and answered, “Hypnosis. I’m quite adept at – “

“No.” Turning to me, so he could shuffle me away from here, Damon said, “Let’s go.”

He stopped when the Professor said, “Hunting is such an angry profession, and she is the phantom huntress that’s been making waves for a few years now, is she not? I really could help her.“ 

Damon and I shared a brief look, and I gave him a subtle shake of the head. I hadn’t said anything about that to the guy, although it was possible that Elena had. Looking back at him, Damon replied, “If you know that, you must know what I am, and if you’re trying to impress someone, it isn’t her, or me . . . I take it you’re on vervain?” Yeah, no, I didn’t think this guy was going to be able to be compelled into forgetting me either.

“Well, I – “

“So am I.” Damon disappeared from my side, and knowing where he was going, I turned back, but Bonnie had already stepped in front of the professor to block him. 

“Damon, don’t! He’s just trying to help.” Her eyes found me for help. “Eve?” 

Yeah, she had no real way to stop Damon anymore. When she saw me hesitate, her brow furrowed in consternation. Just hearing her say my name might’ve made Damon wait to find out what I had to say about it, but he wouldn’t wait forever. We were talking about a second or two at most, and as her expression started to shift into a slightly more hardened look of ‘I was right about you,’ I sighed, “I just want to get out of here, Damon.”

He quickly looked back at me. “But – “

“I know.” I tossed a look at Bonnie. “I owe her one for today.” I wouldn’t have made it as far as I had without her. Focusing on her more, I said, “I take it you want to stay a little longer.” She gave me a small nod. That was a shame. “I don’t think you should, or at least not alone. He’s not what he wants you to think he is.”

Rolling her eyes, she asked, “Anything else, Mom?”

“Yes, actually . . . He’s way too freaking old for you.“

Her eyes widened in mortification. “Eve!”

“What? He is.” She threw a flabbergasted look over her shoulder towards the man in question, decided she was too embarrassed to even apologize for me, then looked at me in frustration before flicking a hand in Damon’s direction, like, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me. He’s way older,’ and that just highlighted that she put Doctor Snake in the same category that I did Damon, so she wilted a little more.

The entire experience really just brightened my entire day, and if the embarrassment wasn’t enough to make her want to leave right this second, then maybe this was, “You know what? That’s not the point. The point is that Professor Snake wants something from you. This entire charade - from his lecture to offering his help on my curse - has been about you, so be careful . . . There’s a reason I won’t let him mess with my mind, which I’m pretty sure he wanted to do as a demonstration for you, so don’t let him mess with your mind either. You have no idea what a guy like him will put in there or take away, and if you’re seriously going to stay after everything I just said, then whatever trouble he brings with him had better not land on our doorstep.”

Her shoulders fell, and her mouth twitched to the side as she considered it. I was pretty sure that my forthrightness may have had something of an impact, and it soon became apparent that the professor saw his chance at whatever he wanted dwindling too. I’d been careful not to look at him once and had only focused on Bonnie or Damon. With what I presume he thought was a charming chuckle, he started to say, “Paranoid, much? I know hunters are a cautious bunch, but – “

Putting my hand up to shield my eyes from his face, I looked in his general direction saying, “These kids might buy whatever it is you’re selling, but I don’t, and now you’re on my radar . . . I’ll find out what you’re hiding. I can guarantee you that.”

“I really think that if we could get to the source of why you hunt, then the anger – “

Damon cut him off. “Show’s how much you know, because the two aren’t linked at all. She’s not like any hunter you’ve ever met or read about in one of your books.” With a snort, he added, “And I’ve never heard her tell someone they were on her radar, but I’m pretty sure that means you’re screwed. If you want my advice, pack up whatever it is you’re plotting and move on . . . maybe change your name, because when she finds out whatever it is you don’t want us to know, and she will, then – “

Elena interrupted him. “Stop trying to make her sound like a monster. She has a rule about killing people, and you know it.”

With a smirk, Damon looked at her. “Maybe she does, but I don’t, and that is what makes us such a killer power couple, Elena.”

It annoyed her, amused him, and my attention went back to Bonnie. Maybe I just needed to explain why she shouldn’t trust this guy by drawing a road map for her. “Did he contact you out of the blue, or did you decide to come here on your own?” The cautious look she gave Elena said the former, so I said, “Your Grams used to have his job, didn’t she?”

“How did you know – “

“I know a lot about her, and I’ll tell you all of it when we get out of here, but I don’t want to get hung up on it now . . . I bet he dangled her in front of you to get you here, and given what happened recently, that has to be your Achilles Heel right now, but how does he know that? Sometimes, coincidences aren’t coincidences at all. He knows way too much about all of us, Bonnie. Knowledge is power, and he’s so proud of the power he thinks he has over us that he just can’t help but sprinkle it into what he's saying every so often, but he’s never set foot in Mystic Falls, so how does he know it?”

“Why are you doing this?” I looked at Elena and she said, “You’re intentionally sabotaging – “

“I’m not sabotaging anything. I’m trying to keep him from getting his claws into her any more than he already has. Listen to his heartbeat after everything I say, and you’ll see what I mean. I can tell just by seeing his body language shift in ways he can’t control that I’ve hit the mark a few times already.” 

Bonnie’s eyes turned up to Damon for confirmation of something she knew Elena had missed, and he tilted his head towards the exit. “We should go. He’s definitely hiding something, and he’s getting more desperate for her to shut up.”

Professor Snake snorted. “You don’t actually believe any of this, do you? It’s ridiculous. I just found some of Sheila’s things and thought you might want them . . . maybe Sheila does too. Maybe there’s a reason I found them when I did.”

That sentimental nonsense seemed to be just the right thing to say to sway Bonnie back to his side, and I pointed an accusatory finger in his direction. “How does he know that’s exactly the kind of thing you need to hear right now, Bonnie?”

“I know how close they were. Sheila talked about her all the time. A loss like that – “

I cut Professor Snake off. “A loss like that happened over a year ago, so why would you think it’s still so raw now?”

“It’s called the human experience. Maybe you should try it sometime.” 

My eyebrows arched at Professor Snake’s tone as I turned back to Bonnie. “Do you hear that? The mask is starting to drop . . . He doesn’t like being questioned, and I’m willing to bet that he doesn’t know what he knows about us through normal research. He has insider information, but he’s not rich. He’s bought his insiders off in other ways . . . ways that money can’t buy, which makes the people who have given that information to him either hypnotized, manipulated, coerced, true believers of whatever he’s sold them, or all of the above. Bet he knows at least one other witch who could tell him what happened to you recently, because dead witches are always talking to living ones, and if that’s true, then why would he go to you instead of using that witch for whatever he wants? Bennett witches are special, and - ”

“I think you should leave . . . Whatever recommendations you were thinking you might get – “

 _Don’t look at him. Do not look._ “Dr. Snake, I can get into any school I want, any time I want. The promise or loss of your recommendation means nothing to me.” Briefly biting my bottom lip, in thought, I tried Bonnie one more time. “That’s it. It’s because you’re a Bennett. He’ll try to sell you on anything you want to hear, because you’re vulnerable right now, and he knows it. It starts with a connection to you through your Grams. Then you get here, and he’s doing a lecture about all the great and wonderful things he knows about witches, so he can show how much he appreciates them in front of a crowd, and that’s to make you think he understands oh so much about you in a way nobody else does . . . Do you want me to keep going, or is that enough?” 

She was legitimately torn. Despite the day we’d had together, she didn’t really know me very well, and she definitely didn’t have a reason to trust me given our past. Because of that past, she was having a difficult time understanding why I was pushing this so much now, and I understood that. I might question it myself, but I really wasn’t just going to let red flags go anymore, not when the last time had led to such disastrous results with Jeremy, Alec, and Alec's Dad. “Why would he go to all that trouble for me, Eve? I can’t even – “

I was pretty sure he knew she couldn’t practice witchcraft right now, but I didn’t want to give him that opening. He’d say he could help her get her powers back - probably through hypnotism, and then he’d have a Bennett witch in his thrall. “Do you remember what I said to you about what happened with Jeremy? About the tug of war and how with all of them on one side, and you on the other, you came out on top?” She was that powerful on her own . A slowly released breath, and she gave me a sad nod. “It’s no different now, Bonnie. They just found a way to punch you in the nose, so you’ll let go of the rope. It doesn’t mean the rope’s still not there.”

“But what about Grams?“

Stefan had told me a little about it, so I knew she thought that every time she used magic, her Grams would be hurt, and it was causing a huge mental block on her being able to use magic at all, but there was more to it than that. “I’m sure she’s more than all right with her place in all of this.”

“What?”

“You don’t think she’d sacrifice herself 100 times over for you if she thought where you were heading would hurt you a lot worse in the long run?” 

Bonnie bit the inside of her cheek, and her eyes got a little watery. “Like your Mom did for you?”

Well, I hadn’t thought of that, but it didn’t mean she was wrong, and if it helped her connect with me over Dr. Snake, I didn’t mind using it. “Yeah . . . Yeah, a lot like that, and I am better for it. Take the punishment, Bonnie . . . It may not seem like it now, but it is her gift to you, and it won’t last forever . . . just as long as it takes for you to learn something from it.” Her shoulders gave just a little more, and she sighed, “Do you really know a lot about her?“

Her Grams? “I put a lot of research in on all the witches that had something to do with me being here, so yeah.” Her eyebrows rose in the unspoken question of whether or not that meant what she thought it did, and I nodded. “And I’ll tell you whatever I know, just not here, and not now.” 

“Okay.” After a reassuring nod to herself, she reaffirmed her choice with another, “Okay,” before turning back to Dr. Snake with a smile. “Thank you for all your help today. We may have a terrible way of showing it, be we really are grateful.” 

I sighed a breath of relief, and she went to go back into the office to collect her bag with Elena trailing behind her. By the time they came back, Dr. Snake had a new strategy in mind. As Bonnie passed him, he said, “You have my number . . . In case you want to talk.”

Before she could respond, Damon did by mocking him for what he’d said earlier. “Desperate, much?” Pushing himself off the wall he’d been casually leaning against, he muttered, “And now I’m bored.” As he turned to me, he said, “Before you rule college out completely, you should at least let me show you that the nightlife can be fun.”

Walking with him towards the door, secure in the knowledge that at least for tonight, Bonnie wasn’t going to fall into Professor Snake’s trap, I asked, “What’d you have in mind?”

“We haven’t played good vampire, bad hunter in a while.” I was wearing a jacket, so my arms were covered, and if I kept my hands in my pockets, it would reduce the risk of me touching anyone in a crowded bar, but playing the game would increase that risk back up to almost unacceptable levels. I could maybe get by with darts, because those would be doing all the touching, not me, but getting people to drink vervain drops might be the best bet. That’d work better in clubs where you could convince people the drops were drugs, and they were more than happy to take them even though what they were getting was mostly water. Still . . . drunk people’s inhibitions were down, and they might still try to take the drops from me or touch my hand in some kind of way. It’d certainly make the game more challenging, but I wasn’t sure if it’d be worth it.

“I can’t touch anyone.” 

“Good. That means no stomping on someone’s foot when I’m about to talk to them, kicking, or shoving.”

That’s what he was saying, but when I looked up at him over my shoulder, I got the impression he was already playing a different game of some kind. He knew I shouldn’t be playing Good Vampire, Bad Hunter. He was up to something. To find out what it was, I decided to indulge him for now. “But I can stomp on their foot or kick their knees out from behind without touching them, so . . . “

“No touching means no touching.” 

“Then a lot of people are going to have drinks thrown in their faces, I guess.” 

Elena caught up to us. “Can Bonnie and I play?” I did owe Bonnie some information on her Grams, and if she and Elena didn’t head back straight away, I could get that done tonight, but I wasn’t so sure that she and Elena would think much of our game, and my uncertainty showed. In response, Elena rolled her eyes. “Well if we’re not even touching anyone, then nobody is going to get hurt, right?”

“True, but there’s compulsion involved, and – “

Looking at her, Damon cut me off. “You can try it, but with that bunny diet, Stefan has you on, I really don’t think you’re going to be able to do much in the compulsion department,” and my eyes narrowed slightly. 

“I was thinking more about the ethical concerns they might have, but I’m sure she’ll be fine on the compulsion front.“

“Not if it doesn’t hold.”

Elena quickly asked, “Well, what are we compelling them to do?”

I answered, “Something good with their lives . . . like something they’ve always wanted to try or do.”

She and Bonnie shared a look, and Bonnie asked, “What does the bad hunter do?”

“Stop the person from being compelled, and the person doesn’t get to live out his or her dream.” 

They shared another look and had a silent conversation between them before Bonnie said, “Elena, no. It’s – “

“Just one game, Bonnie. How bad could it be? It might even be fun.”


	20. A Smaller More Manageable World

There was a knock on my door, but I didn’t get up to answer it. I didn’t say anything either. The door opened, and I almost considered turning my head in its direction. “Eve? I know you’re here. I can hear your heart beating.” I’d been waiting for Caroline for how many days? Of all the times for her to want to talk. I just wanted to be alone right now, but I didn’t want a mood I was in to permanently ruin our friendship. Before I could think of what to say, she kneeled down, lifted the comforter, and found me. “What are you doing under your bed?”

I turned my head to acknowledge her and then went back to looking at the slats above me. It’s not something I’d felt the need to do for a while, but I used to do it quite a bit when I was a kid. Mom was always at work, and day or not, it seemed soothing if I was sick or in distress about something. My world may have already been small, but I guess this just made it seem even smaller and more manageable. “Trying to find peace . . . meditate to get out of my head.”

“Hide?” I looked at her again and gave her a reluctant nod. Instead of trying to drag me out and put me in a better mood, she got down on the floor, and I had to scooch over to make room for her as she found a place next to me. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Couldn’t go out during the day to work it out with training or a jog. Didn’t feel like talking about it either. Felt even less like pushing her away. I mean she had gone to all the trouble to get down here. “Where have you been?” 

I felt her sigh as she focused on the frame above us. “That’s not why you’re down here.”

So it had been intentional. I hadn’t just imagined it. “Is it because I told your Mom – “

“Do you have any idea how much you upset her, Eve?” 

I hadn’t felt what it was like to think I was going to lose a child, but I’d been in the general vicinity of that with thinking that I was going to lose everyone except Elena. “Yeah . . . yeah, I’m pretty sure I do.” 

“Not to mention Mrs. Lockwood, and it was all for no reason!”

“Well, it wasn’t for no reason.”

Her forehead crinkled as she turned her head to look at me. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I was in the same boat as them at the time, and I thought they should know.”

“There’s nothing they could’ve done to stop it though. As far as they knew, we were safe on our way out town. Why would you think they’d be better off thinking we were about to die?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “At least they would’ve known you hadn’t completely cut them off by choice . . . and maybe I wanted them to get their goodbyes. I mean I called you, so you could say goodbye to Tyler. Would you have rather I not done that?” When she didn’t answer, I looked at her, and that’s one I hadn’t even considered. “You’re not mad at me for calling her. You feel guilty about not even thinking of her, and what makes it worse is that she knows it too, because I said you were going to be with Tyler. That’s what you’re mad about, isn’t it?” Her bottom lip quivered a little, and I sighed. “I’m sorry for that . . . I didn’t even think – “

“You never do. For a smart person, you sure can be dumb sometimes.” With a sigh, she added, “You should’ve heard all the voicemails she left me. She was so scared.” 

“And that made you feel even worse for forgetting about her?”

Her composure broke a little, and she gave me a sad nod. “Why didn’t I even call her? I should’ve at least done that. I’m the worst daughter in the world.”

“No, you’re not . . . You were scared, and when people are scared, they don’t think clearly.”

“Did you?”

“I don’t think I was scared, but . . . I did have a broken arm and a dislocated shoulder, and I kept refusing any kind of treatment. I was just like, ‘No, I want to look the way I feel.’ Does that count?”

Her eyes briefly studied me to see how serious I was being, and then she snorted before she went back to looking up at the bottom of the bed. “Yeah, I think that probably counts as not thinking clearly, and yet so you at the same time.” After a brief pause, she finally said, “I got your call . . . How was it?”

“Awful.”

“The road trip, or the whole college experience?” 

“Both . . . Have you talked to Elena lately?”

“I’ve been spending more time with Mom and Tyler, but I know she's having a hard time getting used to all the changes.”

I muttered, “That’s an understatement,” and Caroline’s expression changed to concern. 

“She hasn’t killed anyone, right?”

“No. She hasn’t even fed on human blood yet. She’s stuck to the animals. It’s everything else. She’s envious of you.”

She cracked a grin. “Elena Gilbert does not get envious of anyone, especially me. Why would she? Ever since we were little, she’s always been everyone’s favorite.”

“She’s envious that you and I are friends. She had a massive hissy fit when I called you.” Her smile started to disappear, and I quickly added, “And it’s not just you. It’s Damon and Stefan, Alec even though he’s dead, Katherine and Rebekah.”

“Katherine and Rebekah?”

“Yeah, she thinks I’d rather have Katherine as a sister, and I might have told her that she was bullying Rebekah the other day . . . That seems to be what really kicked it all off, and since then – “

“She’s been obsessing?”

I sighed with a nod, and said, “And I had her talked down on the drive up, but then she started going weird on me again that night when I picked Bonnie to be on my team. She’s been doing this thing where she throws things I’ve said to her back at me, like things I said that hurt her feelings or made her angry but that she didn’t really respond to when she was still alive.”

“Are you sure you weren’t antagonizing her on purpose?” That earned Caroline a slight glare from me, and she laughed. “Oh come on, Eve. You know she’s a newbie vampire right now, and you know what triggers her negative emotions around you, but you picked _Bonnie_ to be on your team instead of her?”

“I wanted to win, and Bonnie was the better choice.” She gave me a look that said she was dubious about my motives. Fair enough, I used to push Caroline’s buttons all the time, and sometimes I still did, but that’s not what I was doing last night. “Do you remember the game we played after your birthday? Good vampire – “

Sounding for the first time like she was upset that she hadn’t made it, Caroline finished for me. “Bad hunter? I love that game!”

She was good at compelling people to treat themselves well, but in light and fun ways. She was also _extremely_ competitive, and that made her an excellent opponent. “I know, and we’ll play it again as soon as I get rid of this curse. I promise . . . but Bonnie is the obvious choice to be a hunter. If she was going to play, then it’s the team she could live with being on morally, and she was motivated not to let anyone be compelled, because she’s against it, which means she was going to help me win instead of being a liability.” 

“Plus, she’s not a vampire.”

“Exactly . . . but I’m guessing it was a long drive back to Mystic Falls for those two.”

“You weren’t with them?”

“Damon came to get me.”

“Why? Couldn’t he let you have one day to yourself?”

I tried not to smile at the obvious disapproval she had for him and chose not to take the bait. “It was a rough drive there, an even harder day, and when he got there, I was just happy for the backup. I was trying to keep Elena and the creepy Occult Studies Professor from hypnotizing me into not being angry anymore and was super close to staking her. With Damon there, I didn’t have to focus on keeping them away from me, so I was able to work on keeping Dr. Snake away from Bonnie. He’s bad news, and she thinks he’s hot.”

“Hot and bad? Why is that such an irresistible combination?”

I exhaled a laugh. “I don’t know.”

“You should. You’re with Damon, and – “ I turned my head to look at her, and she stopped. “What? It’s true, and we still haven’t talked about that yet. How could you let Elena know before you told me? It made me look an idiot when she confronted me about it.”

“Confronted _you_ about it?”

“She accused me of keeping it from her. Why do you think I spent all my time with Bonnie those couple of days?”

“Well, I assumed it was because you were supporting Bonnie after the trauma she went through when Klaus took her and I threatened her Mom.”

“I was . . . It just made it a lot easier for me to give her all my attention.”

With a sigh, I focused on one of the patterns on the underside of my mattress. “I guess I didn’t realize how insecure Elena was about her relationship with me when she was alive.”

“Well, it sounds like it’s definitely coming out now.”

“Yeah, it’s hard not to notice . . . and it’s not like I told her about Damon and I. She walked in on us . . . you know, kissing or whatever, and – “

“Ew, gross . . . I don’t want to hear that.”

“Well, do you think I wanted her to see that?! I think that other than finding out my parents were dead, it was the worst moment of my life, or at least it felt like it at the time.” She laughed and then relaxed. Taking a deep breath, I finally said, “But for her to be that upset about it . . . I should’ve known.”

“Known what?”

“That she had more than just a crush on him before she died.” 

“Wait, you don’t think – “ I looked at her again, and she quickly said, “Oh, come on, Eve, she didn’t love him. He was just . . . forbidden fruit.”

Mm. Damon told me one time that the forbidden was irresistible too. “Then why is she sired to him now?” 

Her forehead furrowed in apprehension. “Sired to him? Do you know how rare that is?”

“I do, and I also know why it happens when it does. It’s because of the feelings she had for him when she was human.”

“No, that can’t be right.”

“I can take you to my Mom’s lock up and show you the book it’s in if you want, and you were there when she compelled that girl at the church after the hunter attack. Could she do it?” Watching me warily, Caroline nodded. “Yeah, that’s what she kept saying after she suddenly couldn’t do it when we were playing the game, and before we played, Damon said that with her bunny diet, he didn’t think she’d be able to compel anyone and have it stick . . . I think he suspected it and brought up playing that game in front of them, so he could test it out.”

“Couldn’t she have just been nervous about it in a crowded place like that? I know she was at the church.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never compelled anyone, but I would’ve thought that it’s not that difficult. I mean you didn’t even know you were a vampire the first time you compelled someone, right?”

Yeah, she agreed with me that Elena should’ve been able to do it, but she didn’t want to admit it. “Did you talk to Damon about it to see what he thinks?” I think he and I both knew, but we didn’t want to say it in case the other one didn’t, and so far, we’d been able to successfully avoid it without it being obvious. When Rebekah didn’t call to confirm she’d be here yesterday, he and I went through the things he’d pilfered from the hunter's camper van before he came to get me at Whitmore on Friday, and now he was out looking for the hunter, because the hunter's body hadn't been found after the explosion at the hospital. Plenty of other things to be doing than talking about this. I shook my head. “Then it could be nothing.”

“Except the whole reason he decided to come get me was because I lost control of the curse. I didn’t want him to make a big deal about me being there with her. I was managing, and it would've been unnecessary drama, so I didn't tell him who was there when he asked me in a text, which just led to more drama, because the fastest way for him to confirm it was her was by calling her. If she was in class with me, then he figured she wouldn’t answer, and it’d go to voicemail, but she did answer. It went downhill fast after that.”

“Well, had the class started yet?” 

“It was right in the middle of it.”

“And she answered?” There was texting in class, which Elena definitely did, and then there was answering the phone, which was out of character for Elena and probably most other students in a similar situation. 

“Yeah, and he told her that he wanted to talk to me, but before he could say after class, she just handed me the phone and said, ‘Damon wants to talk to you.’”

“In the middle of class?!”

“Like she was my receptionist and it was no big deal even though the entire lecture hall and the professor had stopped to watch. I got angry, because it was – “

“Super embarrassing?”

“Yeah, and it’s not just the phone incident. She wanted Bonnie to be our chaperone. Stefan was our chaperone the night before that . . . I think it’s because Damon said he didn’t want the two of us alone together after what happened at the funeral, and at the funeral he told her to go easy on me, and she did it even though she was still angry. She just didn’t sound angry, and I bet she went to go get Damon no matter what I said, because she heard him tell me he wanted me to come find him if I started going downhill . . . She was there when Damon left with Klaus to get more information on a possible cure for my curse, and now I think she was as insistent as she was on getting that professor to help with my curse, because she wanted to help Damon find a cure for it. He asked her take me to Rebekah’s party and make sure I had fun, and I don’t think that was her intention that night at all, but she did it. I’m sure that if I looked hard enough, I could find a link between something he’s said or done and her being overbearing or overly nice, which means the only time I know she’s been real with me is when she’s angry. Everything else I have to question, because there’s a good chance she’s doing it for him. She must be desperate to get back in his good books, because he’s cut her out since I came back, and for a sired vampire, that has to be torture . . . She’s sired to him, Caroline. I’m sure of it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Hence the hiding.” I cast a look at her over my shoulder before looking back up to the pattern on my mattress. “Part of me wonders if I missed something. I don’t know how they interacted with one another when I wasn’t around, so maybe he encouraged her even though he said he wouldn’t, but then I remember how she said that he made it clear that he didn’t save her for her the time Elijah took her, and I think that probably means he stayed true to his word . . . I mean he is a flirt, but I think he kept a respectful boundary and enforced it when she tried to overstep it . . . and I also think she knew why he did, but she didn’t want to admit it to herself, and every time she asked me, I wouldn’t tell her . . . Maybe if I had, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“It’s not your fault, Eve . . . It’s not Elena’s fault either, and as much as I’d love to say it’s Damon’s fault, it is, and it isn’t. I could’ve told you the first day we met that you two would wind up together.” 

“The day we met, you told me he was a bad person and to be careful with him.”

“I know, and that’s why I said it.” I looked at Caroline again. “When he found us in the woods, he was . . . Let me put it this way. I knew I had to tell him you were alive the second I saw him, because he would’ve killed me if you weren’t, and he went from that to being so . . . not Damon. He was gentle with you . . . I mean, he kind of yelled at you some, but he didn’t really mean it. He was the same way when you woke up, and you . . . you let him take your contacts out for crying out loud. I wouldn’t let Tyler do that, let alone Damon, but you did, and you clearly knew who he was, or the two of you wouldn’t have been finishing each other’s sentences the way you were . . . If I knew it then, he should have. I don’t blame you. You were completely hopeless. You wouldn’t even admit you were friends. Maybe he convinced himself it should be her, because on paper, she’s perfect, but that doesn’t change how he felt about you by the time I met you. And with Elena . . . I know she liked the attention he gave her even if she didn’t want to admit it, but the first time she saw him with you, it had to be obvious to her that you were together even if you weren’t yet . . . Whatever she started to feel for him probably grew out of that more than anything. Take it from me; you don’t know what you have till it’s gone. That’s what happened with Matt, but now I have Tyler. She’ll get over it.”

“How can she if she’s sired to him, though?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out.”

Maybe. Better be some options in that book. I only remembered it, because at the time I read it, I thought it sounded a lot like being compelled, but worse, because being compelled was usually for a specific task whereas being sired meant everything you did revolved around making someone else happy whether you wanted to do it or not. It sounded horrible. “I’m a little worried that he’s going to use it to try and make her a better sister. I don’t want him using it on her at all, but especially for that. I’d rather have the slow and miserable but steady path we were on back. I don’t want this jealous sister, and I don’t want a fairy tale sister either. One feels as false as the other.”

“So tell him that, and if he doesn’t listen, stake him and keep staking him until he fixes it . . . Do you think that maybe you’re grieving? I mean you said you want what you had before back, and she did die. Who she is now might mostly be – “

“Enhanced.”

“I know you don’t like saying we’re different, and you’re right, but it doesn’t mean she’s the sister you grew up wanting to protect either, and I know how much that sister meant to you. Maybe you just need some time to adjust to the idea that she’s different now and whatever relationship you’re going to have with her is going to be different too.”

I was usually pretty good at learning to roll with the punches life gave me, and I understood how all of this worked, so I expected there to be differences, but I suppose it was fair to say that I was grieving some kind of loss too. “Is it weird that it finally hit me that my twin isn’t the same age as me anymore? Every day since I’ve been back, I’ve gotten older than her . . . It feels like I left her behind, and I’m on my own now.”

When I glanced at her, she looked as sad as I felt about that. “I don’t think that’s weird at all . . . but she’s still here.”

“I know, but . . . what if I’m not sure I want whatever our relationship is going to be now?” That made her look even more upset, and I tried to explain. “When we were in the car on the way to Whitmore, I did something I haven’t done since I left my parents to come here . . . I used to do it all the time. Take a long breath, count to 10, and then not say anything or take back what I said. I don’t know why I do it. It’s like I know that something has to give, and it won’t be my family, so it has to be me . . . It makes me a doormat, and I hate it. Not to mention the fact that it makes me bottle things up and take them out in unhealthy ways.”

“Just give it time. You’ll figure it out. It’s not like you aren’t dealing with your own issues right now . . . I brought your homework for you by the way.”

Yeah, Stefan was the one who had been bringing it home lately, but I hadn’t seen him since Friday morning. He must’ve asked her to bring it to me to fix things between us, and she knew I wouldn’t be home Friday because of my road trip. She’d given it another day to work up the courage to face me, and that’s why she was here today, but he usually came home at night these days, because I think Elena being a vampire was hard for him to handle. “Oh no.”

“What?”

“What about Stefan? His girlfriend is a slave to his brother . . . How the hell did this situation become such a mess?”

Caroline snorted. “Damon. It was definitely Damon.”

“But you said – “

“Yeah, well, I’ve had a chance to think about it, and it was 100% his fault.” Her smile faltered, and she looked at our surroundings as she added, “And he may be an awful, horrible person, but I can see how much it upsets you. We’ll figure something out, okay?” I gave her reassurance a reluctant nod, and her grin returned. “Now, how about we do something to take your mind off of it? I was thinking some retail therapy might – “

“I have a better idea.”

She whined, “I don’t want to train today or – “

“Can’t train in the house, and I can’t do it outside during the day right now . . . Want to help me plan a vampire convention?”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know, like . . . we send out invitations and – “

Her eyebrow quirked up. “Something formal?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“You know Miss Mystic Falls is next weekend, right? I have so much to do for that.”

“But I’m guessing you already have it all planned out. All that’s left is putting it together . . . We could make it for the Saturday after that if you want.”

“And we’ll host it?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Can we have it here?”

“Obviously.”

“A dinner party?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Who are you, and what have you done with my best friend?”

That hunter was still out there somewhere, and a vampire convention might be just the thing to lure him into a trap, but that wasn’t my primary reason for wanting to do it. Bad things usually came in waves, and I was just trying to hold onto what good I could find for a little longer, because I was sure it wouldn’t last. With a grin, I answered, “It’s an inside joke. I’ll fill you in on it, while we plan.”

Grabbing my hand, she started moving us out from under the bed saying, “Okay, we can plan while we shop. We’re both going to need new dresses and shoes and accessories, and we can pick out invitations while we’re at it. We’ll have to do something about the curtains . . . and catering. We can try out a few caterers to see who we like, and music . . . oh, and parlor games.” By the time we’d both gotten to our feet, I was pretty sure she already had most of the night visualized in her mind, and that worked for me. 

Dragging me out into the hallway, she added, “And if you’re doing this to try and make what happened up to me – “

“I’m not.”

“Well, you should be.” 

“You don’t have to manipulate me into giving you total artistic control. I’m too lazy to do it myself, so I enlisted you to do it for me. All I want is veto power.” 

Squealing, she gave me another grin. “Oh, this is going to be so much fun . . . So, vampire convention? I was thinking gothic or maybe an art deco theme?”


	21. A Girls Day Out

My phone rang, and Caroline whined, “Seriously? Can’t he leave you alone for one day?” but it wasn’t who she thought it was. I lifted the phone so she could see, and her eyes narrowed. “What does he want?”

I shrugged a shoulder before answering. “Hi Klaus, how’s the plotting on your newest scheme going?”

_”Well, what have you got worked out thus far? I’d love to hear it.”_

“Thus far, I know it has something to do with that hunter, my sister, her blood, and – “

_”You really are a marvel, Eve. Tell me what my protégé is up to today.”_

I shared a suspicious look with Caroline and said, “Caroline and I are planning a dinner party for the weekend after next.”

There was a brief pause, like he hadn’t expected that, and then it sounded like he was grinning as he said, _”I’m sure it will turn out to be something special. I take it I’ll have an invite.”_

Caroline quickly shook her head. “She’s saying no, but I have full veto power, so I’m going to say yes, because it might make it more interesting. Just don’t tell anyone about it until the invitations go out . . . Now, where is it exactly that you were hoping I wouldn’t be. I presume that’s the real reason for this call.”

_”I’m not sure I know what you mean. I think they call that being paranoid, my dear.”_

“Is it paranoia if I’m right, though?” Before he could respond, I added, “You know you’re actually the second person to say that about me in the last few days . . . The first was an occult studies professor. There’s something really wrong with him. He’s either got spies all over this town, is using a witch to talk to the dead, or both. He called me the phantom hunter that’s been making waves the last few years. I’m more invested in what he’s up to than you are right now.”

_”Do you have a name?”_

“Professor Atticus Shane, Whitmore College.”

_”And why were you speaking to this Atticus Shane of Whitmore College? You wouldn’t have been looking for a way to remove this curse on your own, would you?”_

“I wasn’t . . . It came up though because I was with people who don’t value the concept of secrecy, but um . . . I think I was just mostly checking out the college. I didn’t like it. I’m thinking Duke or New Orleans if I even decide to go.”

_”New Orleans?”_

“Mm. They have a good Occult Studies program there.”

_”Now, that is an idea. I would very much like to take you there to see it. I know the city like the back of my hand, and I give you my word that it will be a much different experience than the last time we traveled together.”_ There was some background noise that got rather loud, and then dropped out entirely. He’d just compelled them to stop, hadn’t he? _“For now, though, I’m afraid it will have to wait. I’m a little busy with my plotting and scheming. I look forward to the dinner party, and give Caroline my best.”_

She rolled her eyes as I hung up. “I wish he’d stop . . . Why’d you invite him?”

“I thought it’d be entertaining, and even if he doesn’t show up, then at least he won’t feel left out.”

“He’s 1000 years old, Eve, not a 6-year-old missing out on a birthday party. I’m sure he’d survive.”

“Actually, he’d probably turn up at the door unannounced . . . Besides, if everyone is sitting at the ‘Kill Klaus’ table at the convention, he’s going to have to sit at the kid’s table by himself for whatever this cause he’s working on now is.”

She snickered before shaking her head. “Well, he won’t really be there alone. You can’t sit at the adult’s table if it’s for the ‘Kill Klaus’ crowd.”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure what his cause is and won’t until I go to his house to confirm.”

“What?”

“Unless he’s doing renovations again, I don’t think he’s there, and I’m pretty sure that he wants me to go there, because he’s trying to trip me up before I can get ahead of him, which means it’s a trap, but it’s probably also where the answers are.”

“So, you’re just going to walk into a trap he’s set for you?”

“I’m not going to walk _into_ the trap . . . I’m going to wait him out and then go there after the trap is no longer a problem.”

“So we can look at dresses before you go on this suicide mission?”

“Of course, but it’s not a suicide mission. He was making plans for what to do days or weeks from now, like the dinner party and New Orleans. He just wants to keep me occupied for the next few hours.”

“But you are occupied . . . with me.”

“I know, but he knows something we don’t . . . There is definitely something going on or there will be soon, and it is going to drag us away from this sooner than we think.”

Opening a shop door, she asked, “What do you think is?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll know it when it happens, and before it does, we need to get ink and wax seals . . . oh, and black ribbons to go around the envelopes.”

“Wow, I think you might actually be more excited about the invitations than I am.”

“That’s the best part.” The stationary we’d found was perfect. Now we just needed to get the rest right. I was really looking forward to writing Damon’s invitation. Damon Salvatore on the inside with a little note at the bottom that said he could do whatever wanted, and Care of Fluffy on the envelope. It was going to be amazing. 

“You’re only saying that because we haven’t gotten to the dresses yet.”

“But the invitations are what lay the foundation of what the night will be like in the minds of the people who get them. They have to be perfect and way better than the ones that the Original Witch sent out when she was here.”

When I looked at Caroline, there was a slightly stunned expression on her face. “You’re the only other person I’ve ever met who understands that. How am I only finding out about this now?”

“I wouldn’t read too much into it. It’s probably just that I want to get them right for this one night.”

“That might be what you want me to think, but you understand my philosophy way too well for it to have never crossed your mind.” Looking through different ribbons, she asked, “Are you really not going to go to Whitmore, because that’s where I was planning to go.”

“I don’t even know if I’m going to graduate at the rate I’m going.”

“Of course you will. You’re still doing all the work. I know Stefan hands it in for you every day, and he was in all your classes.”

“But my attendance hasn’t been great lately.”

“Then, we’ll fix it. You are graduating no matter what . . . and you still didn’t answer me about Whitmore.”

“I really didn’t like that guy. He kind of put me off it, and Duke is where my Mom always wanted to go. It’s almost as close as Whitmore is to here.”

“What about New Orleans?”

“Just a wild card pick . . . if everything around here goes wrong, zombie apocalypse in Virginia, that kind of thing, then I’ll go there.”

“You do realize that right about now, you are the revenant you were wanting to hunt, right?” I couldn’t help but laugh and because I did instead of being insulted by something she clearly hadn’t thought through, she decided about 10 seconds later to add, “I could maybe go to Duke. We could be roommates . . . What do you think?”

The idea of leaving my room at the boarding house felt a little too real all of a sudden. It was similar to the feeling I’d had when Mom said it was time for me to move to Mystic Falls on my own. “I think . . . go where you want, but Duke definitely has a better cheer leading squad if you want to keep doing it after high school. You’d even get television exposure for it sometimes, and you do want to go into broadcasting . . . might be a good way to start networking with the right people.”

“I would be good enough to make their squad now . . . I have an edge. There really isn’t any point in doing it at Whitmore, but I wouldn’t have to give it up if I went to Duke, would I?” Nodding as she considered it, she finally said, “I’ll think about it . . . but don’t think I didn’t notice what you did back there. There’s a good chance that professor won’t even be alive to teach at Whitmore by the time we can go, so keep it open as an option, and I’m definitely calling dibs on you as my roommate. I don’t care if it makes Elena jealous or not.”

A couple hours later and I had a dress for Miss Mystic Falls that I hadn’t planned to attend until I was told I had to do it or no vampire convention. Now we were picking out fancy dresses for the convention. Caroline got a text from Tyler at around the same time I got a call from Damon, and she and I shared a look as we reached for our phones. “Do you think this is it?” 

I shrugged my shoulder as I went to answer my phone. “Only one way to find out.”


	22. Red Flags

“What are you doing here?” 

I hadn’t gone to the emergency meeting at Tyler’s. Caroline could run there faster than she could drive there, so I’d convinced her to let me borrow her car. I’d needed to go back to the boarding house to get a couple of guns, some ammo, my binoculars, and my listening device, and since everyone else was at the Lockwood’s, I’d been able to hide all the stuff Caroline and I had gotten in places my roommates wouldn’t search. Damon had told me that the hunter had Jeremy at The Mystic Grill, so I just went straight there instead of wasting time by meeting with everyone else. "Could ask you the same thing. Haven't exactly seen you around the last couple of days." Looking back at Stefan, I added, “I'm here to get the lay of the land.”

“And you don’t stick out at all.” 

“Maybe to you, because you jumped up here, but I am on a roof, and the umbrella can’t be seen from down there. Where is everyone else?”

“Everyone else is waiting for you to meet them. We agreed that I'd do the recon to find out who he has and what kinds of traps he’s laid.”

Already done. “He has Jeremy, Matt, and that girl from the church. There are trip wires on all the doors, pressure plates around the place too from what I could see. To be on the safe side, I’d go with the assumption that he has something worse than vervain, something poisonous. Tyler was just the first werewolf he had a chance to find, so of course he'd jump at the chance to use werewolf toxin, but I'm sure he's used other things along the way that have a similar effect, maybe weapons or ammunition that have been hexed. He is not averse to overkill, so whatever weapons he's got are not going to be your run of the mill hunter's weapons."

"You mean like your ninja stars?"

"I mean exactly like those. I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what else he's got." I glanced up at Stefan and then went back to my surveillance of The Grill as I said, "Anyway, I’d expect a few surprises that I haven’t been able to see, but everything seems to be directed at the doors and windows along the ground floor . . . The windows on the second story could work as an entry point, because he hasn’t had a chance to fortify up there yet, but I’d also expect him to have rigged the staircases, so I’m thinking we should use the tunnels.”

“What tunnels?”

“The ones that run under the whole of Mystic Falls. One should come out in the back room if I remember correctly.”

Crouching down next to me, as he looked down at the Grill, Stefan asked, “How do you know that?”

“A dossier that – “

A look of recognition crossed his face. “Damon might’ve mentioned it once or twice . . . It burnt up in your first apartment, didn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“So, you’re going based off of memory alone?”

“Hate to break it to you, Stefan, but a good vampire hunter has to have a good memory.”

After briefly focusing his hearing in on what was happening in the Grill, he finally said, “The girl’s name is April.”

“Who is she?” From what I’d been able to hear with my listening device, she had no idea that vampires were real, and yet the hunter had targeted her twice now. There was probably a reason for that.

“Pastor Young’s daughter.”

“Oh . . . right.” The hunter was targeting her, because her Dad probably had something to do with the hunter being here. “When we get her out, maybe don’t mention that I stabbed her Dad on his last day.”

Stefan was only half-listening, possibly debating himself on something, and then he finally looked at me. “We could do this now. There’s less of a chance of casualties if it’s just the two of us, and the faster we move, the sooner it’ll be over.”

“You don’t want to wait on the others?”

“Why should we? We killed Klaus’s hybrids together, right? We can be a good team when we want to be. If we use the tunnels and go in the back, you could get the hostages out, and I’ll deal with Connor.”

“Don’t call him Connor.”

“Why?”

“It gets too personal when you use names. I mean, with this guy, I called him Connor until I gave him a chance to back down, and he didn’t take it, so if you’re going to kill him just call him ‘the hunter.’”

“We can’t kill him, Eve.”

Well, that was news to me. “Why not?”

“He’s a human being.”

“No, he’s not. He’s a hunter.” Based on what I heard the hunter tell Jeremy, I’d say he agreed with me. _”Vampires kill humans. Hunters kill vampires.”_ Didn’t exactly sound like he considered himself a human either.

“You’re a hunter.”

“I know . . . and even then, I’m a breed apart. I’m really more like a hybrid. Bit of this, bit of that, and you get a different type of monster.”

After a deep sigh, he shook his head. “We’re really going to have to talk about how you see yourself some day . . . and we’re not killing him. We need him alive.”

Red flag number one. Stefan lied. He didn’t want the hunter alive for moral reasons. It was to serve a purpose. “Why?”

“You’re just gonna have to trust me.”

Red flag number two. Withholding vital information from a supposed teammate right before a hunt. Our interests were not in line at all. He might help the hostages as a bonus, but the real person he was here to save was the hostage taker. “After the disaster we had on our hands with Alec’s Dad, I’m sure you can understand why I don’t think it’s a good idea to just let another hunter like him walk. I have no idea how many people he’s killed using bait, but it’s enough not to bother him. He already stabbed the girl at the church – “

“April.”

“Whatever.” He snorted, and I said, “The point is that he used her as bait, and it was a fatal wound, so she would’ve died if it weren’t for Caroline and Elena. He clearly escaped from Klaus, and what’s the first thing he does? Grab her again along with two more people. He will blow all three of them up without a second thought, and if he doesn’t get what he wants, then he’s only going to keep upping the body count of innocent people the longer he’s allowed to do it. Can you live with that?” After a brief hesitation, he started to nod, and I shook my head. “If you have the ability to stop him and don’t, it’s the same as killing his victims yourself, Stefan.”

His shoulders fell, and he looked down at the Grill again. Clearing his throat, he said, “You, um . . . You said he escaped from Klaus? Why would you think that Klaus had him?”

“He called me this morning. If he thinks 10 steps ahead. I have to think 11, so I knew he was setting me up for a trap to keep me from getting involved in something that was about to happen. I think the thing he wanted me to miss was this . . . Plus, he was there when they tried to blow up the hunter in the hospital, and he’s fast enough to have gotten the hunter out of there in time.”

Trying to find the words to respond, he failed to do it and simply asked, “He called you?”

Red flag number three. Stefan was a terrible actor. It was obvious he already knew about everything I’d said. He was working with Klaus, wasn’t he? “Yeah . . . But I think you knew that. What’s going on?”

Clenching his fist, he looked back down at the Grill and shook his head. “I want to tell you, but I can’t . . . He’ll kill anyone who finds out.” 

“He won’t kill me.”

“He killed his own sister to keep it a secret. Don’t think he wouldn’t do the same to you, or at the very least turn you, so he can have a few hours of peace to get what he wants without you interfering.” Uh, that was incredibly specific. Glancing at me, he added, “I mean, he’s already said it once.”

Big, giant, red flag number four. That’s not why Stefan said that about turning. He was just trying to cover for saying too much. Is that how Klaus had been planning to tie me up for a few hours? If Stefan knew that, why didn’t I get a heads up about it from him until now? How did he know that Rebekah had missed her friend date because Klaus stuck a dagger in her heart again? Was he there when it happened? Did he help? _Play dumb, or this hunter fiasco is going to get a whole lot messier._ “I was a little surprised you didn’t take it as seriously as I did at the time.”

“I did take it seriously, but I wasn’t going to let you know that you should if you didn’t know it already, because I didn’t want to scare you.”

“Oh, please. When have you ever seen me scared?”

“Just stay clear of him.”

_Yeah, you’re definitely trying to distance yourself from Klaus now for some reason, and it’s not because of what he did to Rebekah, is it? Well, have fun with this, jerk._ “Would that I could, but he’s coming to our house next week, and he wants to take me for a college tour in New Orleans sometime before I graduate.”

“I think I’m starting to understand why Damon was so desperate to keep you away from him.”

“Certainly used it to your benefit when it suited you.”

“Maybe I did, but I still thought Damon was blowing it out of proportion. I had no idea how troubled you really are, Eve.”

“Troubled?”

“Klaus is not your friend, and he’s not your mentor or Mama vampire or whatever it is you think he is.”

_I can handle Klaus. I saw his trap from a mile away. You, on the other hand, are dropping down at least one, possibly two tiers of trust._ “Then why are you helping him? It’s for Elena. I know that much. You’ve got that desperate to save Elena look in your eyes that you had all summer, but if he’s able to use her blood for his hybrids again, then – “

His shoulders fell as he looked at me. “You don’t know when to give up, do you?”

“Runs in the family and goes back at least 500 years, possibly longer. If you’re more into nurture versus nature, then the upbringing I had made sure it’s an ingrained ability, so either way I don’t think I’ll be changing any time soon.”

His voice softened as a realization struck him. “You really do see Katherine as family.” And we were back to the look that said he thought I was troubled again. 

“You don’t have to like the family you’re born into, and you don’t have to trust them either, but it doesn’t make them any less family . . . And that’s not the point. The point is that Klaus not being able to use Elena’s blood right now is what’s keeping her safe from him, or don’t you remember that he almost succeeded in killing her outright by draining her of her blood. If he can do that with her being a vampire, then – “

“She wouldn’t be a vampire anymore.” 

Okay, now it was my turn to be surprised. That couldn’t mean what I thought it did. She'd what, just go back to being human again? I shook my head. “That’s not possible.”

“Apparently, it is.”

It wasn’t the hunter’s blood, or Klaus would’ve found a way to force feed Elena with it already. Other than his physique being enhanced, there wasn’t a whole lot more that was special about the hunter other than some tattoo. I hadn’t seen it myself, but he’d been talking with Jeremy about it when I got here. Maybe when it was complete it had a recipe for a cure? Was Klaus off looking for impossible to find ingredients? I glanced at the Grill before taking a deep breath. “I hate the way she is now.” Flicking a look in Stefan’s direction, I added, “But it’s still safer for her like this.”

“What kind of life is this for her to have though?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t really given her a chance to start living it yet . . . It would solve one big problem I’m worried about though.” If she was human, she wouldn’t be sired to Damon anymore, and maybe Stefan would never have to find out about it. On the other hand, “If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is, Stefan.”

“But if a cure is out there, we have to do everything we can to get it for her.”

Well, it looked like I was going to have two fights on my hands, because he’d already made his mind up on this, and the closer we got to our end target, the more desperate he was going to be to stop me. That desperation made him dangerous, and I shouldn’t underestimate that. Did I need to bring him? I could always go to the hardware store and buy a pickaxe to get through any barriers that may have been built up in the tunnels over the years, but I’d only be able to do it in 10, 20, 30 – minutes per barrier, so a vampire being able to knock them down in a matter of seconds would get me to the Grill a whole lot faster. It didn’t have to be this vampire though. I did know quite a few of them now. 

I got the feeling that he wasn’t going to make it easy for me to get them involved though. He’d ditched them to do this supposed recon mission, but now he was ditching them entirely to do the rescue mission with just me. In the span of a few minutes, I’d gone from being a free woman to his hostage, hadn’t I? He just needed someone to get him to tunnels he hadn’t known were there and a guide to get him going in the right direction of the Grill. As soon as he had a clear idea of where he was going, he’d try to ditch me too. Why was he doing all of this? I’d been so focused on Elena’s guilt that I hadn’t really considered Stefan’s. “I know you won’t hear this, but I have to at least say it, Stefan. Elena turning was not your fault.”

“I know the choice I made, and I have to live with that, but this isn’t about me. It’s about saving her, because she is spiraling, and I know you can see it. She wasn’t cut out for this. I heard what you said in the barn - that you think her losing the people she loves will be the hardest thing she has to experience, and maybe you’re right, but what about when she kills someone, because she will if she stays a vampire. It will destroy her.”

Destroy her or destroy his image of her? It might be hard for her, but I wasn’t so sure that it’d _destroy_ her. There was always a little murderer in there under the kind and loving girl-next-door, or there wouldn’t have been times when she was willing to have people kill on her behalf or help at times, the way she had with Finn. It just had to be someone she agreed needed to die to protect her, her friends, or her brother. I couldn’t exactly disagree with him anymore than I already had though, because if I persisted, then he’d just try to get rid of me now. “Killing an innocent person would probably torture her.”

“Then you understand why we need to get the cure, and to do that, Connor can’t die.”

_Play this the right way, Eve._ “I suppose it is like being between Scylla and Charybdis.”

“The lesser of two evils?” 

It’d been a word play. The saying meant choosing the lesser of two evils, which is what I wanted him to believe I was doing, but in the myth, anyone who tried to choose between the two monsters wound up sinking their boats, because the only path through was straight down the middle, and it was the hardest path to navigate. As if the hunter wasn't bad enough on his own, Stefan would appear to be the second monster I had to avoid so I could make it home tonight. “Yeah, let’s go find those tunnels and get this over with before they get here.”

I got to my feet, and he looked up at me before getting to his own. “You’re going to help me, right? I mean you’re not just going along with this, so you can screw me over, are you?”

That’s exactly what I was going to do. I didn’t want Elena to be sired to Damon, but letting this hunter run amok in town wasn’t the right thing to do. Neither was turning Elena back into a blood bank for Klaus again. “Wouldn’t I have done it just now if that were the case?” 

“Or you knew I was expecting it.” 

I did after the red flags started popping up. “What was it Klaus said? One of the best lessons you can learn is how to be on a team with someone you don’t trust as long as you ultimately reach your goal.”

Following me to the fire escape, Stefan retorted, “See, now I think you’re just bringing him up to annoy me, and I’m pretty sure that right after he said that you told him that once you reach your goal, you have to stop your teammate from running off with the trophy.”

“It was your idea to do this together . . . Hey, Eve, remember that time we killed Klaus’s hybrids together? Didn’t we make a great team then?”

“But then we both wanted the same thing, and this time, I know you’re at least conflicted about it.”

With a sigh as I started my descent, I said, “I’ll help you get them out, but I’m not leaving you alone in there with him. I know how hunter’s think. You’re going to need me, especially if you want to take him alive.”

By the time I got to the bottom of the ladder, he was already down there, and I turned to face him. “All right fine. I’ll trust you, but I’m listening out for this.” He pointed to my heart before adding, “And the second I hear it start to slow down, our team status is over.” My eyebrow quirked up in question, and he rolled his eyes before turning away from me. “I don’t know how you do it or if you even know you are, but as someone you’ve attacked more than once, I do know that it’s your tell.” 

And that was the problem with letting vampires I attacked live to see another day. They learned things like that when they should just be dead. Of course I stayed as calm as possible when attacking or being attacked by a vampire. I didn't want my blood swooshing more than normal or gushing out all over the place. “Okay. I’m just going to need to get a pickaxe first.”

“You won’t need one with me.”

“Which is louder? You Hulk-smashing your way through any barriers, or a pickaxe? I think the closer we get, the more we’re going to need one.”


	23. Brothers and Sisters

I woke from a dead sleep with a raging headache, and my chest felt heavy. “Make it stop.” 

“Eve?” 

I realized I was enveloped in warmth. It felt comforting. Was I being held? Well if I was, then I was sitting up, not laying down or standing. “This doesn’t feel like Hell.”

“It’s not.”

“Then why can’t I see?”

“Your eyes are closed.”

“Where am I?”

“We’re in the tunnels.”

What tunnels? “What happened?”

“I think my brother knocked your head against the wall.”

“I don’t remember.” 

“Well, what’s the last thing you do remember?”

Sleeping, but I didn’t think he wanted to know that. “Dancing . . . with you, I think.”

“You think?” I nodded and was quickly asked, “Evie, do you know who I am?” 

Someone who wouldn’t hurt me. I knew that. “I should.” 

A short growl of frustration. “I’m gonna kill him . . . Can you open your eyes?” No, I just wanted to go back to sleep. I shook my head, and one arm left me while the other tightened its hold to keep me upright. Then something wet was pressed against my mouth. I turned my head away from it. “This is so much easier when you don’t fight me on it.” 

“What are you doing?”

“Giving you my blood.”

“Why?” 

A hand was placed on my forehead to keep me in place against his chest and the slickened wrist was pressed against my mouth again. I may not have been able to move away from it this time, but I still wouldn’t un-clench my jaw. I heard a soft, “Evie, come on,” in my ear, and the anxiety in the tone made me sigh in sadness for it. It’s all the opening that was needed. “That’s it . . . You don’t even have to do anything. I’ll do it for you . . . Here.” The hand on my forehead disappeared, and then my mouth was flooded with a horrible salty, metallic mixture. I made a face and then choked on it, but a few seconds later it stopped, and I was pulled back into the warm embrace. I didn’t stay there long before I was shuffled around and lifted, or it felt like I was. 

I tried to open my eyes, and it was a little blurry, but I could. My sight came into sharper focus, and I knew that face. “Damon?” He slowed down, but didn’t stop, and he wouldn’t look at me. “What happened?”

“What happened is that I’ve made a decision.”

“What?”

“We’re leaving.”

My eyes squinted as I looked around us. _Ah, those tunnels._ But we were in them for a reason. “What about the hunter?”

“I’ll make sure he’s dead, and then we’re getting the hell out of town.”

He’d meant town? “Where are we going?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“For how long?”

“We’re not coming back, Evie, not in your lifetime.”

I should be against him making that kind of decision without me and expecting me to go along with it, but in the moment, I think I was more glad than anything that his ‘decision,’ gave me permission to do something I already wanted to do. Leaving my room at the Boarding House to be Caroline’s roommate? A little daunting. Leaving it to go somewhere with Damon for a fresh start? I welcomed the idea. He was my family now, and there was something so clean about leaving the bad behind in a place. It’s why I never minded moving with Mom, especially after she turned. When you went somewhere new, the possibilities of how things could improve were endless. “Can we wait until the Sunday after next to go?”

He finally stopped walking and looked at me. “You’re not going to argue with me?”

“I’ll keep in touch with Caroline, and she can meet up with us whenever she wants, but . . . I think I’m okay with setting fire to the rest of my list of people. I’m done here too . . . Just make sure wherever we go has a nice piano if we can’t take mine with us.”

His brow crinkled in uncertainty and then smoothed in understanding. “You know . . . about Elena.“

Of all the times for him to want to talk about it. “That she’s sired to you? Yeah.”

“I don’t know how. I never wanted – “

“She had feelings for you when she was human, and your blood was used to turn her. It happens sometimes.”

“That’s not possible. There’s no way she – “

“Well, she did, and she does.” 

He snapped, “So what?” and I guess that meant he knew I thought it was a problem. “It doesn’t change anything. There’s you and me, and that’s it, Evie.” 

It wasn’t that simple though. “Don’t use it to make her a better sister.” 

“Yeah, well, I was thinking that maybe I could make her the family you deserve, but now I just want to go and forget all about this place.”

“And what about Stefan? I don’t want you to leave him on account of me.”

Like he’d been waiting for it once I got a little clearer in my thinking, he almost smiled as he said, “So you are going to argue with me about leaving.”

“He’s your brother. You need him.”

“And you don’t need Elena?”

“I don’t know. I’m starting to think she’s bad for me.”

“And I’m pretty sure that my brother is going to keep finding new and inventive ways of trying to take you from me if we stay in Mystic Falls, because he cannot stand to see me happy.”

“I hardly think that’s why he does it.”

“What happened down here?”

“I guess I outlived my usefulness.”

“For what?”

“Being his guide.” Damon’s eyes narrowed in confusion, and I tried to explain. “Before we came down here, he told me he was going to be listening out for my heart to slow down, because apparently when we’ve fought in the past, it does that, so I bought a pickaxe. I scraped it along the sides of the tunnel every so often to make it look like I was marking where we’d been to keep us from getting lost, so he'd get used to me doing it and wouldn’t think I was doing it to hide the sounds of my heart when the time did come for me to ditch him, but I wasn’t in a position to do it yet. I think he just must’ve figured out where he was going sooner than I thought he would and decided to get rid of me before I could do it to him.”

“Why?”

“I want the hunter dead, and he wants the hunter alive. How’d you find me?” Oh, he definitely thought I couldn’t remember. I quickly dispelled him of that notion. “I mean I know I sent you a text when I was buying the pickaxe, but there are a lot of tunnels down here, and I was hoping you’d see the markings I made. I wasn’t playing . . . I knew he was dangerous, so I was being practical with what I had at my disposal, but – “ After a brief pause, I admitted, “Now I kind of want to try having a treasure hunt with you some time.” 

Looking like he thought that was endearing, he asked, “New game?”

“Could be fun . . . so did the markings work?”

Regret flashed across his face. “Not this time . . . but I’ll look out for them in the future.”

“How did you find me if - “

His protective anger returned as he started walking again. “I went to the entrance you told me you were going to use, hit the scent of your blood when I got down here, and followed it to you.”

Stefan and I hadn’t gotten that far, but I wouldn’t have thought Damon would be able to smell my blood from where we’d gone into the tunnels. “There was a lot of it?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Yeah, there’d been a lot. Head wounds tended to bleed a lot. I was probably still wearing a lot of it, but I must’ve also left a lot back where he’d found me.

We’d gone too far for me to see it, but I still looked over his shoulder in the direction of where we’d been anyway. “Well, be glad you found me alive. If Klaus had his way, I’d be in transition by now.”

Probably shouldn’t have been so cavalier about saying that. Ray of Sunshine, Eve, meet Dark Damon. “Klaus?”

“Um.”

“Why would - He doesn’t want the hunter killed now either. He took him from the hospital, didn’t he?”

“I think so.“

“Are he and my brother working together?”

“Uh . . . “

“Why do they want the hunter alive?”

“I guess – “ 

His attention snapped to the tunnels ahead of us. “Speak of the devil.” 

_Oh no._

“Think I’ll go straight to the source to find out.”

His arm dropped out from under my legs, and my feet hit the ground. It quickly became apparent to me that I was going to be unsteady on them for a little while yet. I wasn’t going to be able to stop him from overreacting, but I could try. “Damon – “

With a final a look, he snarked, “Like you were actually going to tell me,” and then he was gone. 

Goddamnit! How could I expect Elena to not blow things out proportion when vampires of all ages did it? I jogged to catch up, but stopped to cough, and blood came out in my palm. Something told me that wasn’t mine. He’d been trying to revive me for a while, hadn’t he? He must have, because it would appear that a lot of his blood wound up in my lungs. Maybe all of it had except for what I could remember from after I woke up. Well, it was vampire blood, so it was probably already sorting itself out in my system, and I didn’t have time to wait for it to finish, so I tried jogging again and was still slow, but I made it with only a couple more coughing fits. 

By the time I got to them, the situation looked bleak. Damon did say that the fastest way to make your point was to wrap your hand around a guy’s heart and squeeze, but that didn’t mean I liked seeing him do it to his brother. It was bad for him. It was bad for Stefan. It was just bad for brother relations, in general, for things to get that far. “Damon?”

Tilting his head in the direction of the other tunnel, he responded, “He went that way . . . Go.”

Stefan struggled against him. “No! Eve, it’s the only hope she has. Don’t do this to her.” 

If I had a chance at the hunter, I should take it, but I didn’t really feel comfortable leaving these two alone together given the current state of things. “You should stop struggling like that, or you’re going to accidentally rip your own heart out.”

I saw the tension in Damon’s shoulders ease as his attention was drawn to what I’d said. His hand didn’t leave his brother’s chest, but he definitely relaxed his hold around Stefan’s heart as he asked, “Why are you working with Klaus?”

Stefan choked, “Klaus will kill anyone that knows,” and Damon started tightening his grip again.

For crying out loud! It was just Klaus. If Stefan wouldn’t answer, I would. “The hunter’s invisible tattoo has something to do with a cure . . . for Elena being a vampire.”

At that point, this could have easily turned into Damon using his brother to interrogate me, and I was aware of that, but instead, he remained focused on his brother. “So, he’s willing to kill anyone who finds out about it, huh?”

Still in pain, Stefan growled, “Yes! You need . . . You need to take her and get out of town.”

Damon’s eyes took on a more focused look. “Well, that’s what I was thinking, but now I’m thinking I’ll do the opposite if it means giving you what you want.“

“He’ll try again.”

“He will, or you will? He’s not the one who – “

“I had . . . I had to do it!” 

“Are you compelled?”

“No!” Damon paused in his questioning, because his brother had just blown the benefit of the doubt he'd been willing to extend, and Stefan gasped, “You know how she is.”

In mock-confusion, Damon drawled, “Not sure I do. Why don’t you tell me how she is, _brother?_ ”

“When she makes her mind up about something . . . that’s it . . . and she never stops . . . I can’t let her take . . . the only hope Elena has left.”

Releasing his hold on Stefan somewhat, Damon watched his brother as he said, “And your solution to that was to kill her?”

“No!” 

Damon’s grip tightened, and then relaxed. He glanced over at me as he remembered what I’d said in the other tunnel and then quickly back at his brother. “It was Klaus’s idea. He doesn’t want to kill her, but he thinks he found a way to motivate her to be on his side . . . and you think he’s right. What’d you think you could turn her, and it’d be no harm, no foul as long as some wonder cure is out there? That she wouldn’t get in your way if she was trying to help you find it for herself?“ 

He’d started to squeeze again without realizing it, or maybe he did. Either way, I stepped forward to make him stop, but before I actually touched him, Stefan wheezed, “Yes!” and I wasn’t surprised by it, but Damon sure was even though he’s the one who’d asked. He froze, and just stood there, eyes widening by the second, and then they narrowed. “Did you give her your blood before - “ 

Okay, that was enough of that. “Damon.” I ducked under his arm and wedged myself between them. Touching the side of his face, as I tried to get his attention, I rushed out, “Hey, hey, hey. Damon . . . Damon, hey,” and the worry in my voice made him look at me. “I’m okay.”

“You wouldn’t be if I hadn’t found you when I did.”

“He could’ve snapped my neck, but he didn’t. He didn’t mean it.”

“Did he mean to make you dr – “

“He didn’t make me do anything.”

“So, he didn’t give you his blood?”

Well . . . “Okay, so he picked up a trick from Alec, but - ”

“A syringe?” I nodded, and he looked at his brother again as his body tensed. 

“Damon, stop!”

“He committed to it the moment he gave you the blood Eve, and you know it . . . He just couldn’t stand the thought of actually being there when you died, because then he’d have to admit to himself that he killed you, so he left you to die alone.” 

“Or – “

His face twisted in a seething rage stayed focused on Stefan. “You weren’t even going to tell me where she was after you had Connor. You wanted to get him somewhere safe first and wait until she crawled back out of these tunnels on Team Stefan!”

“Fuck.“ For a second, I was sure Stefan was done as I imagined his heart being squished to a pulp, so I said the first thing that came to mind. “Or . . . Or . . . Damnit Damon, look at me!” Reaching back in the couple of inches that I had, I hauled off and kicked him in the shin. He turned those fierce eyes down at me, and I tried again. “Or he had to make it look legit enough that you would take me out of town.”

I thought it was reasonable even if it wasn't true, but he poked holes in my theory almost immediately. “If it was staged, then why did he have to give you his blood first?“ I’d seen him give plenty of people disgusted looks, particularly Klaus, but I’m not sure I’d ever seen him look as angrily disappointed as he did when his eyes went back to Stefan. “Turning me wasn’t enough for you? You just had to – “

 _Okay. Bad subject. Try to divert._ “You tried to do it to Elena. You’re even now.”

“Even?!” His attention came back to me, and his eyes took in what I could only assume was all the blood I was still wearing as he said, “In what universe does this even remotely make us even?”

“Mine?”

His expression softened somewhat. “I almost died and left you to face these vultures alone, because I tried to fix what I did, and in no way did I actually – “

“Hurt her? Okay. You have a point, but he didn’t think it’d be permanent if there’s a cure, and he’s trying to fix what happened to her too.”

“He made his choice when he let Elena have hers.” Going back to Stefan, he hatefully added, “She should’ve died in that car . . . It’s what you both deserve.” 

With a growl of frustration, he yanked his hand back out of Stefan’s chest and pulled me with him as he backed us away. A second later, he was gone, and I was left wondering how much of that had been real. “You need to stop him.” I turned to look back at a gasping Stefan, who was holding a hand over his chest, and he added, “Everyone around me is going to suffer . . . just so he can make me miserable. He’ll start by taking the only chance Elena has at having a normal life, and – “

“Shut up.”

“What?”

“How did you think he was going to react? Did you actually convince yourself that it's what he might want - that you were doing him a favor - or did you forget about him entirely? He was actually happy for probably the first time in his entire life, but now you’ve gone and screwed that up for him, because once again, he thinks you’ve betrayed him, and for making me be a part of hurting him in that way, I think I’m done with you now. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want hear from you. Just fuck off and leave me alone, you maladjusted twat.”

The truth was that I was mortified by all of this, and if he and Klaus thought they had trouble with me now, that’s nothing compared to the horrors I would’ve brought down on both their heads if they’d actually succeeded, but I wasn’t going to say that to him. If I did, then I’d be admitting how much it’d gotten to me, and I didn’t want to think about it, let alone discuss it with him. My saving grace was that I also happened to be angry that Stefan had the nerve to say that Damon’s the one who had to be stopped from overreacting to Stefan's very bad behavior, so it was easier for me to latch onto that for any outward expressions of anger. I was half a breath away from telling him to have fun with Elena being sired to Damon, but forced myself not to say it. It’d probably just make him worse in his obsession to find her the cure, and right now, I was feeling spiteful enough that I didn’t want her to have it, because it’d mean so much to him, and I didn’t want him to get anything he wanted. 

Turning on my heel, I ignored whatever he said and kept on going until I had to stop when he blocked my exit, but even then, I tuned him out and looked through him. I would’ve stabbed him with the stake I should’ve stabbed him with earlier, but that’d mean acknowledging his presence. We were at a momentary stalemate until Damon second-guessed just leaving me with his brother in order to track down the hunter and came back. “Get out of her way.” Stefan reluctantly stepped to the side, and I walked past. I went past Damon too. I wasn’t sure where I was going. I was mostly looking for a ladder or steps leading out. I think I just wanted to go back to my room if I was being honest. I needed to quell my emotions and find peace, or I was going to get sick 

We got to another small cavern, and I stopped as the sight of something red on the ground caught my attention. That wasn’t mine, because this wasn’t the same cavern. Crouching down, I didn’t need to touch it to know it was fresh blood. Damon hadn’t been gone long enough to kill someone and remove the body. Stefan didn’t do this either. Looking around, I saw knee imprints in the dirt not far from the blood, some shoe indentations too. Getting to my feet, I found a few solid footprints and placed my foot next to one. Same exact size. Elena. 

I looked more closely at the footprints that were there. They went from one tunnel into another. Deeper imprints on the exit. She was carrying someone on her way out. I may hate the way things were with Elena right now, but she was still my sister, and I strongly suspected that she needed me.

I took off at a jog that was already a lot easier for me to do. That vampire blood had probably already absorbed itself into my system, which was just crazy. No wonder Meredith wanted a supply of it.

I was vaguely aware that while Damon was keeping Stefan back, they were still following. He seemed to know that I needed a distraction of some kind, but he wasn’t going to be letting me out of his sight for any real length of time anytime soon, and I wasn’t going to get hung up on why. Left, right . . . slow down as a few of the footprints became scrapes near another junction and then pick up the pace when I was sure I had the right way. Eventually, I saw sunlight up ahead and ran out onto a patch of land I knew a little too well. Nothing good ever seemed to happen here. Over there was where Tyler transitioned the first time, and it’s also where Caroline’s Dad and I started trying to help Tyler break his sire bond to Klaus. Maybe that was a sign that this problem with Elena’s sire bond could be fixed too. I tried to hold onto that bit of hope as I cautiously approached my twin.

The hunter was dead. That was obvious. He was lying right there on the ground next to the grave she was digging. She’d been stabbed. That accounted for some of the blood I’d found too, but she’d already healed. Watching her, it was clear that she was in distress. “Elena?”

Finally planting her shovel in the ground, she acknowledged that I was there but still didn’t look at me. “Where were you?”

“Occupied.”

Looking down at the body, she said, “I killed him . . . I should bury him . . . unless . . . would he want to be burned, like John? Is that what hunters – “

Checking out the hole in the ground, I answered, “It’s a fine grave. I’m sure it’ll do as a final resting place. Nice views for unseeing eyes.”

“This isn’t funny!”

“I didn’t say it was. Here . . . Your technique leaves something to be desired.” I reached my hand out for her shovel, and she reluctantly gave it to me. Sticking it into the ground, I used my foot to make it a little deeper and added, “It is better not to use burial for body disposal though . . . There usually isn’t time for it and burial sites have a way of being found along with evidence. Getting a fire to be hot enough to dispose of a body has it’s challenges too . . . Cremation happens at like 1400 degrees Fahrenheit and takes at least 2 hours, and it’s not like you can drive around with a corpse in your car until you get to a crematorium unless there’s one nearby. . . gasoline can burn at temperatures up to 1500 degrees, but it takes time and a lot of gas. It’s better to use it at night when nobody will take much notice of the smoke though. Abandoned houses can be good. Add fire and go. If the body’s left behind, people will think it’s a vagrant, and a dead vampire is really just a dead human at that point, so it doesn't raise any red flags . . . Then there’s blowing up a body, which can be useful in the right spaces, particularly when that’s the method of death, and disused mine shafts are really good . . . If all else fails, never underestimate the power of a good story.” I was setting it up. Laying the groundwork to remind her that I was a bit of an expert on this, because I was a killer too. We’d get there eventually.

When I glanced at her over my shoulder, she was staring at me. “You’re bleeding.”

“I was.”

“It’s all over your face and hair . . . What happened?”

“It’s not important.”

“Yes, it is! Just tell me. I want to know what – “

“I tripped and fell. It was super embarrassing.”

“Why are you lying?!”

“And now you know why I don’t lie. I really am terrible at it.”

Pointing at the corpse, she asked, “Was it him? Did he – “

Stepping forward, Stefan finally said, “I did it,” and she turned on him.

“You?” He took another step to try and explain, and she moved back. “Stay away from me! I heard you talking to him . . . You made some secret deal with Klaus . . . You said you were going to protect Jeremy.” Looking at me, she stopped short. “And with that much blood . . . She didn’t stop bleeding on her own.“ Glancing from him to Damon and back to him, she yelled, “She needed vampire blood, didn't she? She’s my sister, Stefan!”

Before he could answer, I said, “He had a reason for it.”

“There’s no good reason – “

“I didn’t say it was good, just that he had one.”

“How can you defend him?”

Because it was a distraction, and she needed to face what she did before I could really help her. “I guess it’s just what I do. Always the arguer.”

Stepping towards me, she said, “I needed you.”

 _You need me more now._ “I know.”

“I kept expecting you to show up, but you didn’t, and then he . . . “ 

She flicked a look in the body's direction, and before she could say anything else, I provoked her by saying, “Well, he’s dead now.”

It achieved the desired result. “Don’t you think I know that?! I’m the one that killed him.” And there we have it. It finally hit her. “I killed him . . . I killed someone.” 

As she started hyperventilating, I left the shovel where it was, so I could step up to her and take her head in my hands. “Look at me . . . Elena, look at me.” Her eyes landed on mine, and I whispered, “I’m right here with you. Now breathe . . . Sync with my breaths. Inhale. 2 . . . 3 . . . 4. Exhale. 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . . Good . . . Keep doing it.” She nodded in a panic, but did it, and when she’d gotten through it a few more times, I said, “Close your eyes.” I got a calmer nod from her, and as her eyes closed, I rested my forehead on hers. “Just listen.” Another small nod, and I took a deep breath that she seemed to try and follow even though I hadn’t intended for her to do that. “I want you to think about Connor, okay? I want you to think about everything good you might’ve known about him, and I’ll tell you some of the things I found out about him too.” 

Stefan started to intervene, and I put my hand up to silence him before putting it back on the side of her head. “Connor was born, so he must’ve had parents. Maybe he had siblings. He probably had friends growing up. He was obviously in the military, so at one point, he was willing to sacrifice himself for his country. His being a supernatural hunter happened to him. He didn’t choose it, and he didn’t know anything about vampires other than the myths everyone hears. A guy he met in the service had the hunter’s mark, and all that guy could tell him was that vampires were real and since Connor could see the invisible mark, then it meant he was a potential hunter. That guy disappeared, and Connor probably forgot about it. Then one day the mark just appeared on Connor’s hand out of the blue. He was just trying to complete his mark, so he could find answers about what was happening to him . . . You could even say there was part of him that was doing what he did out of fear, because the thought that he’d become what he had without any meaning was probably frightening . . . You got all that?” 

Tears were streaming down her face, and she was choking on sobs, but she nodded, so I said, “And now I want you to think about how he gutted April at the church . . . It was her Dad’s funeral, and she’s an orphan now, but that didn’t stop him. He’s done that to a lot of innocent people to be as cold about it as he was, and those innocent people were scared, alone, and never survived. They all had parents and siblings and friends who suffered with their loss. He had a friend that was turned, a _friend_ who trusted him, and she was completely innocent, but he killed her just because she became a vampire. He targeted April not once but twice. He took Matt. He took Jeremy, and he was going to blow up all three of them. They might mean the world to you, but he didn’t care if they died. He didn’t care that you wouldn’t have been able to identify what was left of their remains or tell which parts went with who. While you were grieving the piles of goo that used to be your brother and Matt or April, he would’ve started planning his next trap. He would’ve gone after Bonnie. He would’ve come after me. He would’ve gone after Tyler’s Mom or Caroline’s. He knows there are vampires at the high school, so he would’ve gone there and used more hostages that he would’ve killed too. I want you to imagine him staking Caroline in the heart and Damon and Stefan and Tyler, and then when he was done with all of them, he would’ve moved on to the next town and continued doing the same thing to more innocent people that he would’ve used as bait until he killed enough vampires to get the answers he wanted. I want you to think about all of that, and then I want you to ask yourself if it is outweighed by the good we talked about first.”

Her eyes opened, and she was calm. She knew the answer. “He needed to be stopped, Elena. You don’t have to feel good about it, but it was the right thing to do.”

“You really think so?”

I nodded. “I would’ve done it myself, but you got to him first. I’ve been telling you this since you started giving me a chance. Hunters are worse than the things they hunt.”

“You told Caroline that hunters are monsters who haven’t turned yet.”

“That’s right. I did.”

“You’re not.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been the villain to plenty of vampires, Elena.”

“But you don’t hurt innocent people.”

“Debatable.”

With a sigh, she said, “I know you haven’t been able to save all of them or even most of them. I mean you don’t use them as hostages or bait.”

“No, I don’t do that. I use myself instead.”

“Does that make you special?”

“I think it makes me more of a lifelong martyr to my own screwed up belief system.”

“You’re being one now. The sun is making you look worse by the minute.”

“Thanks. That’s just what I wanted to hear.”


	24. About the Future

Something loud disturbed my sleep, and while my arm flailed around to try and find it, Damon climbed over me to get it. The noise stopped, and he mumbled, “What do you want, Elena? It’s late, and – “ I heard him sigh. “All right . . . All right. I’ll tell her. We’ll see you when we see you.”

His arm dropped, and I heard my phone land on the floor next to the bed. Instead of going back to his side, he moved just enough not to put all his weight on me when he collapsed and decided to stay where he was. “What was that about?”

“Go back to sleep.”

“But – “

“You’ve had a long day. I’ll tell you when you wake up.”

“I’m awake now.”

“How awake?”

Honestly? I could just as easily fall asleep in the next 5 seconds as I could shake it off. “Half and half?”

“Then sleep. It can wait an hour or two.”

I started to nod off and murmured, “Okay . . . I leave it to you to decide if I’ll be angry about not being told when I wake up or if it really is something that can wait.”

A second later, he huffed out a sigh, before he pushed himself up to watch me as he said, “She killed Jeremy.”

My eyes immediately shot open. “She what?”

“He’ll be fine. He was wearing his ring.” I started trying to crawl out from under him. “Eve, you can’t be at her beck and call for every little thing that happens.”

“But this isn’t a little thing.”

“You thought it was when I did it.”

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I looked back at him. “Yeah, and I was there for you too. It’s going to mean even more to her, because he’s her brother.”

Moving to sit with his legs to either side of me, Damon wrapped his arms around my midsection and rested his forehead on my shoulder. “Is it what’s best for her if she gets used to you doing this kind of thing for her when we’re just going to leave in a couple of weeks anyway?”

So much for doing the opposite of what his brother wanted. “You’re asking if we’re still leaving?”

“Are we?” 

Placing my hand on the back of his head in a reverse hug, I answered, “Don’t you have some work with Stefan that you need to do before we go anywhere?”

His voice was muffled by my shoulder as he said, “I don’t have it in me to be a brother to him the way you’re a sister to Elena. We both know how you feel about her right now, but you still put her first when she needed your help.” With a sigh, he paused, and then finally admitted, “And I may not be able to do that, but seeing it . . . I still want to make his life a misery, but just watching Elena lay into him for what he did to you when he only did it to help her was enough, and when it’s not, I’ll probably tell her that he tried to turn you, or I’ll tell him that she’s sired to me, but I can’t really go a much lighter shade of grey than that . . . and we still haven’t talked about what happened today.”

I threaded my fingers through his hair to give him some comfort, but I didn't particularly want to talk about it ever if at all possible. “I called you in as back up. Does that count for anything?”

“It does. Huge step forward, and we should be popping champagne to celebrate . . . but what I meant was that we haven’t talked about what almost happened.”

“Is there any need to talk about it? It didn’t happen.”

“I want to know what you would’ve done if it had.”

Things hadn’t been going very well for Elena. It reminded me a lot of Mom and some of the problems she’d had. I may have let myself forget about how it’d felt for me to be in that situation with her, because nostalgia seemed to beat reality now that she was dead, but remembering what that’d been like brought back a lot of the reasons for why I hadn’t really wanted to turn when I first met Damon. I didn’t want to change in those kinds of ways. On the other hand, I’d still mostly be me, and now that I’d experienced in the hour after Klaus was staked what it must feel like for Damon every hour to believe that I was going to die, I didn’t want to put him through that, but then Damon’s reaction today hadn’t made it seem like he wanted me to be a vampire, and I couldn’t forget what damage I might do to the world if I was a vampire with this curse, or you know, in general. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

“I really don’t.”

“You wanna know what I think? I think that if anyone forces you into it, you’re gonna do the opposite of what they want. If it was me, you wouldn’t complete the transition, but today? I think you would’ve gone through with it, gotten to that cure first, and destroyed it in front of them. Then, I think you would’ve made it your life’s mission to make their lives a living Hell for all eternity, and either way, I’d lose you . . . If you turn, it has to be your choice. Any other way, and it will not end well.”

He really did know me better than anyone else. “If I turn, I’m not sure you’d like what you got even if – “

“It may not be the life I want for you, but I’d take you either way, Eve.”

“And if it brings out hidden insecurities, like it has with Elena? You’d think I was a complete psycho, and you’d be right.”

“I thought you said you trusted me.”

“I do.”

“But now you’ve had time for it to sink in that Elena’s a vampire, and you’re not, so you think I might swap you out for a longer lasting model, especially if she already has feelings for me?” That was quite possibly the best way of putting how I felt about it. Turning my head to rest it against the side of his, I didn’t say anything, so he did. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Might be.”

“Then I want you to know that if there is a cure, I’m going to think about taking it.”

“What?” Letting go of his head, I turned to look at him. 

“It could be an option now.”

“Is this a manipulation of some kind?” 

With a smirk, he said, “You caught me,” and then his smirk slowly fell. Tilting his head to the side while appraised me, he asked, “But what if there was a teensy tiny part of me that did mean it?”

“I’d say it means there’s a teensy tiny part of you that will think about it?”

“Okay, now you’re being overly literal on purpose, so let me spell it out for you . . . What would you think if I took the cure?”

I didn’t know. Until today I didn’t know there was such a thing – if it was real - and I hadn’t thought it’s something he would or should take even if it was. My shoulders fell, and my mouth opened without me really having words to say. I sounded very confused when I finally did mumble, “But you love being a vampire.”

“I do, but I also miss being a human, Eve. I’m just not sure that me as a human would be enough for you.”

“Well, I’m sure that a human you would be completely appalled by me.”

And now he was the one who was confused. “Why would I be appalled by you?”

“Most humans tend to be.”

As understanding dawned on him, he shook his head. “Me taking the cure isn’t any different than you turning. Either way, one of us would go through some pretty big changes, but I’d still mostly be me. It wouldn’t erase the last 146 years, and I’ve seen and done a lot, Eve. I wouldn’t be the same naïve guy I was then. I wouldn’t be appalled by you . . . I just wouldn’t be able to do the things I can now . . . probably be needy without the fun . . . and annoying without the benefit of me being able to heal you whenever you need it.”

“Plus, you wouldn’t have any idea how to survive in the 21st century without being a vampire who can compel his way into anything.”

His eyebrows arched. “Not sure you were supposed to agree with me and then start giving me more reasons why me as a human wouldn’t work.”

“No, it’s not that . . . but I don’t think you should do it.” 

“Why not?”

“Let’s say you do take the cure, something happens on a hunt, and I get killed or turned? Because that’s something I think about sometimes, like if I were to turn, and you died, then I’d be stuck as a vampire without you.” This entire relationship had all the hallmarks of being a tragedy. With a deep sigh, I bowed my head, and added, “This is a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into, isn’t it?”

Using his finger to lift my chin, so I’d look at him, he said, “It’s not a mess. If things stayed the way they are, then I’d be happy, but they won’t, and now we have two options on what to do about it. With one, it’s you and me together forever, and I would love to spend an eternity with you. With the other, we get to grow old and die together, and I’d love that too just as long as we did it together, but I don’t know if you’d love me ‘til death do us part if I wasn’t the way I am now.” 

“Well, I don’t think you would if you weren’t the way you are now.”

“You’re not sure that I would if you were a vampire either.”

“I’m a lot more sure of that than I would be if you were human . . . but I don’t want you to do it or not do it for me. If it’s something you want, then I will help you get it, and then we’ll take it from there. Maybe I could find a way to make you love me again.”

His eyebrow quirked up. “You’d woo me, huh?”

Shrugging a shoulder, I answered, “I could try.”

“No trying necessary, Evie. I’d already be yours.” He kept saying that, but I didn’t think that’d be true at all. I ducked my head again, and he said, “You’re the one I’m worried about.” Yeah, he kept saying that too.

“Damon, I love every part of you, and there are times when you look very human, like innocent or uncertain or happy, just very human, and it gets me every time. If you were like that all the time, I’d love you then too . . . but what happens the first time you see me do something violent, and you aren’t seeing it through the filter of being a vampire? What happens when I don’t come home when I say I will, or you get a call from the hospital, and what if it keeps happening, but your magnified vampire love isn’t there to make you want to stay, because you just can’t put yourself through it anymore? What happens when my work follows me home, and you’re a human that can die a lot easier than you can now?”

“Well, to answer your first question, I suspect that I’d be in awe of you as a hunter, because I’d understand how much harder it is for you to do it if I’m human too. On the second question, it wouldn’t be any different than it is now. I never know if you’re going to come back when you walk out that door, because you find trouble everywhere you go, but there’s no way I’d wait at home for you while you’re off on some hunt just because I’m a human, which brings me to the third question. I know my way around a stake and vervain. I can take care of myself, and it might be harder for me to die now, but I can still die, so that wouldn’t really be any different than it is now either . . . And none of that is what has you worried.”

I looked at him, and he said, “I don’t love you because I’m a vampire, Eve . . . You would’ve been the girl for me in 1864 too. I would’ve thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Those eyes of yours give you an edge over Katherine. There’s so much depth to them that she just doesn’t have. I would’ve been impressed at your piano recitals and even more when you didn’t hide how smart you are. It’s what small town society dictated at the time, but you still would’ve never gone for it, and it would’ve made you seem eccentric and worldly. There’s no doubt in my mind that I would’ve been drawn to the danger of you being a vampire hunter, because that kind of thrill was one of the things that drew me to Katherine. The fun I would’ve had with you would’ve eclipsed the fun I had with her, because the games she played were always within the boundaries of maintaining appearances unless she took me hunting with her, but you would’ve pushed me so far outside my comfort zone on a daily basis that I would’ve followed you anywhere just to see what you did next, defended you to the whole town any time we were caught, and loved every second of it. Katherine was always nice on the outside and mean on the inside whereas you’re the opposite. I would’ve been drawn in by your kindness as much as all the rest, and the fear of losing you would’ve made me hold on tighter, not let you go.”

That was some response. There was something so whimsical about it, but it flooded me with sadness, because if that’d happened, it would’ve meant everything to him. He didn’t have say it for me to see it in his face or hear it in his voice, so it hit me kind of hard. Those dreams of what may have been would never be real memories, because I was born in a different century, but he was starting to think he could have something similar in the present. I just didn’t want him to make that kind of decision if he was only doing it for the fantasy, because fantasies weren’t real, and I certainly wasn’t one. Clearing my throat awkwardly, I asked, “And if I gave up hunting to keep you safe . . . retired?”

“I wouldn’t want you to do that for me.” My eyebrow arched in response, and he understood what I meant. “And that’s why you want me to decide for me, not you.” I nodded, and he leaned forward to brush his lips against mine before nuzzling against my face. “You were right. I was saying it to show how serious I am about you and only you.” He licked his lips before adding, “But I might take thinking about it a little more seriously than I intended.”

After a brief pause, I said, “And I’ll think a little more about turning.”

“I don’t want you doing it until we get rid of this curse . . . I wouldn’t take the cure until it’s gone either.” I didn’t say anything, and he quietly asked, “What, you didn’t think I thought of that?” I shook my head. “How many people do you think you’d touch in 100, 200, 500 years? More than ever touched the die, and you’d know where you were sending them, because you’ve been there . . . With everything being magnified, it wouldn’t matter if it was an accident. You wouldn’t survive it. I’d wake up some morning and find your daylight ring and a note. I don’t want that either, Eve. Neither decision is one we need to make today or next year or even 5 years from now. If we have time, we can do this right, but we won’t get that time if we stay in Mystic Falls.”

“Where would we go if we left?”

“I was thinking New York. I like it there, and it’s easy to get lost in the crowd, so I think you’d like it too.”

That’s not why he really thought it’d be a good reason to go there. “I don’t need you to protect me with anonymity, Damon.” 

He leaned back an inch or two, and I watched his eyes flit between mine. “Well, I have to do something, Eve. Things are getting out of control here. When I found you today . . . “

His eyes shifted focus to where I’d been hurt, and his fingers came to the side of my head to lightly trace over the phantom injury. “I’m okay.”

“It was the worst one yet.”

Time for a little perspective. “Worse than me dying . . . twice?”

His eyes came back to mine. “You knew what you were doing both times, and this time, there was so much blood.”

“Was there more than when I stabbed myself 3 times with a stake?”

“About the same . . . And I knew it was yours. I’d know that scent anywhere, and it was strong, so I knew it was bad. The whole time I was trying to find you, I was thinking that maybe your ring wouldn’t work anymore. Maybe if you die again you’ll just get sent back to where you were or somewhere worse, and I wouldn’t get you back this time. Then I found you, and . . . there was a heartbeat. It was weak, but it was there, so I knew you weren’t dead. I rolled you towards me to give you my blood, but there was no resistance to me moving you . . . you were so lifeless . . . just like when you died, but then it was like you were sleeping. This time . . . with the blood . . . I touched where it was coming from, and it was all wrong, like your skull was crushed . . . and you couldn’t swallow my blood, so I didn’t know how much was going in . . . I think I might’ve been drowning you, but as long as I heard your heart, I couldn’t stop trying . . . How could you let that happen, Eve?” 

Might as well have asked, ‘How could you do that to me?’ because that’s what he’d meant. Bowing my head, I wasn’t sure what to say at first. He may always be looking for things that might take me from him, but there was a part of him that’d come to trust in my ability to confront just about everything, including death, and still come out on top. It wasn’t even a trust he’d been aware of until today, because it'd been damaged. “I think maybe he knew I was on the roof before he let me know he did, so he had time to get everything ready, like the syringe, and went up there with a plan, because he knew Klaus's plan, but he changed his mind while we were talking and by the time we came down from the roof decided to use it as a last resort. He stayed outside at the hardware store, while I was in there, but I knew if I went out the back, he’d be waiting for me, because he didn't want me to get to the hunter first. I also knew that he wouldn’t expect me to get you involved, so I did. I figured that you’d be a good distraction when you showed up, and it’d give me the moment I needed to do something about him if I couldn’t find it before that. I knew he was going to be a problem. I was prepared for a lot . . . just not the syringe . . . I don’t know why that’s such a blind spot for me. You, Alec, Stefan, some random compelled guy in a bar . . . It gets me every time, and – “

Understanding dawned on him as he said, “You’re used to vampires attacking like vampires, not humans.”

I flicked a brief look in his direction, before saying, “Yeah, well, after he injected me, I kind of asked myself what the hell he’d given me and lost the second I needed to defend myself. It was pretty much lights out straight away.” 

“Thought you needed more like two seconds if you’re unprepared.” 

When I looked up at him, it was clear he was trying to absolve me of guilt now, but it wasn’t warranted. “I had one, and I could’ve found a way to make it work. He was standing right next to me.”

“So, it was a bad angle for you . . . and he knows not to fight you, so he got it over with as fast as possible while keeping you at arms-length . . . just grabbed your head and slammed it into the nearest rock, right?” My shoulders fell at his second and third defense of me, and leaning forward, he pressed his lips to mine, like he was apologizing for asking me what he had. When he pulled back to nuzzle into my face again, he whispered, “We can’t stay here, Eve. Every vampire in town knows your weaknesses.”

“It’s one weakness.”

“You said he was listening for your heartbeat to slow down . . . I haven’t even noticed that.”

“Yeah, well, when I attack you, I’m usually mad, and this isn’t about every vampire in town. Caroline trains with me all the time, and we make one another better. Tyler helped me out when I didn’t know what to do about Caroline’s Dad. Elena’s a baby vampire, so what’s she gonna do? This is about Stefan.”

“Every time you two fight, he learns something else about you, and if he has, Klaus has.”

“And yet Klaus thought turning me would be a good idea.”

“If he doesn’t really want the cure, it is.” He was being sarcastic, but when he leaned back to look at me, he was starting to think what I was.

“What if he doesn’t?”

“You think he knows you well enough now to know that getting rid of it is exactly what you would’ve done?”

“Maybe, but it’d mean no more hybrids.”

“What would be more important to him than that?”

“Not having the cure used on him?” 

Damon sat back further, and it was clear that he thought we were on to something. “He’d just be a werewolf . . . and his blood line wouldn’t be tied to him anymore.”

“You can’t be sure of that. His spirit being in the body of someone else is what saved you. It didn’t seem to matter if he was in an immortal body at the time, but if he’d died when he was parading around as Tyler, then I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t be here right now. He’d be limited to a werewolf life span, which means that you would too, and that’s assuming one of his many enemies doesn’t find a way to kill him in the meantime. If the cure exists, then it’s extremely well hidden. Maybe it should stay where it is.” 

“Except the others are after it now, and it won’t stay hidden forever. We should get to it first.”

“And do what with it?” 

“Take what we want for a rainy day and get rid of the rest?”

“It’s not like there’s some underground well of the stuff. It wouldn’t have stayed hidden for long if there was much of it.”

“Then we just get rid of it.”

My eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You just said you’d think about taking it, and your first thought was to keep some in the event of a rainy day.”

“Okay, fine. I was thinking I’d move it somewhere else.”

“You suck at hiding things.”

“Then I’ll give it to you, and you can hide it. I just don’t want them to have it, and it kind of ruins any plans I might have of forever with you if anyone uses it on Klaus. It also ruins any possibility of me being human with you if there isn’t much of it and they use what’s there on your sister. She’s been a vampire for 5 minutes. Why should she get it?”

I think that in that moment, he successfully put to rest, once and for all, the topic of he and Elena. He could be trying to manipulate me again, but I knew him pretty well, and I didn’t get that impression at all. It was more about Damon keeping Stefan from getting what he wanted, and she was more of an afterthought, but that in and of itself said enough. I really needed to get her un-sired from him. He was dangerous when he held a grudge. It wasn’t a situation that would end well. “I want Elena un-sired from you before we do anything else.” He opened his mouth to deny there was anything there, and I added, “I’ve learned a bit about how these things go. Opportunities present themselves, and they’re hard to resist. We fix that first.” 

Understanding what I meant, his face fell, because he couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t try to use it against Stefan at some point no matter how pissed off it’d make me. It worked as well as compulsion. All he’d have to do is tell her it’d make him happy if she participated in a bloodbath with Stefan, and hello, Ripper Stefan, or that it’d make him really happy if she took off and never saw Stefan again. “Fine . . . and then we’re going to try being on the same team with the same goal for a change.” 

“You wanna use finding the cure as a team building exercise?”

He started to smile. “Think of it like your treasure hunt idea, but instead of competing against one another, we’re working together behind the scenes . . . or, you can let me try to sell you on New York again.”

Biting my bottom lip, I considered it. “Okay. Take it from the top. You like it there, and it’s easy to get lost in the crowd, so you think I’d like it too.”

His eyes flitted across my face before he smiled to himself and said, “I want to find a place with you that’s just ours. Until we get rid of your curse, we can sleep all day and have fun all night. I can finally take you to see a band you like. We could even see a different one every night of the week. We can crash parties and go to clubs. We’ll invent more games, and there will be no rules except for the ones we make ourselves. I’ll compel us into the museums at night. There are countless restaurants that you should try, and – “

“Are there a lot of vampires in New York? It’s hard to distinguish patterns when there are so many human monsters there too.”

With a slow-growing grin, he answered, “There are always vampires there. You can hunt them, and I could get rid of some of those human monsters . . . clean up the streets, like the anti-hero you think I am, and when we get tired of New York, we can go somewhere else.”

Despite what happened today, he didn’t mind me hunting on my own. He just didn’t want me here anymore, because he thought his brother was too dangerous. He thought Klaus was too. He was also kind of enthusiastic about this New York thing. It wasn’t just something he was doing to protect me. He wanted to start showing me more of the world, and he wanted us to be a little more free to be ourselves than the watchful eyes around here would allow us to be. “They’re both tempting.”

“It’s because I said to think of it like a treasure hunt, isn’t it?”

I slowly nodded, and he exhaled a laugh. “How about if we win the race to the cure, and then go?” 

“Yeah, okay. Sure.” I liked the sound of that.


	25. Potential

I hated to admit it, because I’d enjoyed our talk, but Damon had probably been right. We could’ve slept a few more hours before we came over. Elena wasn’t listening to anything I said. She was just pacing back forth, still covered in Jeremy’s blood. She’d really only wanted someone here to wait with her, but she also didn’t want me getting to close to him, so there was a safety perimeter of about 3 feet that I had to obey, and he wasn’t back yet. 

Sitting back in the big chair in the corner, I yawned again and watched Jeremy like a hawk for movement, because I wanted to get to him before Elena, but I also found Damon’s meddling to be mildly amusing as Stefan walked in the front door. I mean it had to be Damon, right? Elena hadn’t called him and neither had I. As if reading my mind, from behind a book he was reading in the chair across the room from me, Damon smirked at Elena’s reaction. “Did I forget to mention I called Stefan?” 

Okay, it was a little less amusing when I got a look at Stefan’s face as he approached Elena. “What happened? Why didn’t you call me?” He was really hurt that she hadn’t, but I wasn’t sure if I felt bad for him or satisfied by his suffering. Maybe it was a little of both, and she wasn’t having any of whatever he had to say. She finally decided to do something about the blood on her hands and left the room. Perfect timing really, because almost as soon as she did, Jeremy sat up with a gasp, and I immediately grabbed the glass of water next to me and scrambled to my feet. When he saw me, his eyes widened a little in a fear he couldn’t hide, but I quickly said, “Not Elena,” and he relaxed. That was the entire reason I’d wanted to get to him first. Can't imagine that anyone would want the first person they see to be the person who killed them. “Here.” 

I shoved the water in his direction as he swung his feet off the couch. “I don’t need it. What happened?”

“Stop being all macho about it and take it. I know your throat is sore as hell right now, and this is the fastest way to make that stop unless you want to wait it out, and – “ 

At my nagging, he finally reached out to take it from me, so I’d shut up and started with a sip that quickly became him chugging the whole thing. When he was done, I took the glass back, and he looked a little better as he asked, “What happened?” again.

“I don’t want to tell you it was an accident, because it sounds like I’m minimizing it, but it was . . . I guess she was dreaming, or she was awake, so hallucinating, and she thought she was being attacked. She was scared and fought back. You were the casualty.”

“She called for me. That’s why I came down.”

“Yeah, well, she was calling for help, but when you came down here, she didn’t see you as you. She saw you as the thing that was attacking her.”

“Which was?”

“Connor.”

His eyebrows rose, and he sat back on the couch. He glanced down at his hand briefly before looking at Stefan and then me. “Actually, do you mind if we talk . . . in private. I’ve been meaning to for a while. It’s important.” 

Stefan seemed hesitant but gave him a nod before saying that he needed to talk to Elena and swatted Damon’s shoulder as he passed him, like he expected Damon to leave too, but Damon looked pretty comfortable where he was, and I waited . . . and waited. Finally, he said, “Oh, come on, me too?”

“He said private, not with a Damon-sized fly on the wall.”

With a grumble, he got up from his place and said something about going to get breakfast on his way out the door. As soon as it closed behind him, I sat on the coffee table across from Jeremy to be closer to his height but still a safe distance away. “Okay, spill.”

“How much do you know about Connor?”

“I heard at least some of what he said to you in the bar yesterday - the heart-to-heart part anyway. I was on a roof across the street listening in it, so I guess I know what you do, since anything you found out about him the day before has been compelled out of your memory.”

His shoulders fell as he realized the burden he’d felt was shared by someone else, but he still said, “So if that’s where you were, why didn’t you do anything? I know you could’ve handled him by yourself.”

“You’re right. I could have, but I was detained.”

“By who?” I looked towards the stairs, and he leaned forward to whisper, “Was it Stefan, because he’s who compelled me to forget being with Klaus.”

“Yeah, he tried to turn me in the tunnels on the way there.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Motivation . . . He didn’t want me to ruin his chance to cure your sister of being a vampire, and he thought that if I was one too, I wouldn’t.” 

“What?”

The only part of that'd he heard was that there was a chance his sister could be cured, so that's what I decided to address rather than any reasons I may have had for not wanting her to be cured. We could get to that if he asked about it, and even though I no longer thought that Klaus wanted to use the cure on Elena to eventually make more hybrids, I had yesterday, so that's the story I was going to stick with for now if anyone asked, because it was true. I also wasn't going to put everyone at risk with Klaus by filling them in on what I suspected - that he just wanted to get rid of the cure, so it couldn't be used on him. 

He was in top secretive mode and paranoid. Giving him more of a reason to be paranoid would be a bad idea as would letting anyone else know that I now wanted the cure simply because Damon and I were on a treasure hunt for it and not to give it to anyone in particular. I mostly wanted to beat Stefan to it and destroy it in front of him to be totally honest, but if Damon really wanted to have it as an option some time, I might just substitute a fake in and destroy that in front of Stefan instead. Either way, I needed to get to the cure first. “The tattoo on Connor - I think it might have had the recipe for a cure when it’s complete or a map to the cure or something.”

“What if I said I have one?” 

“Have one what?” 

Lifting his hand, so I could see the back, he asked, “Can you not see it?”

 _Shit._ There was finding the cure as part of a treasure hunt, and then there was using Jeremy to do it. “A tattoo?” He nodded, and I said, “Your hand looks normal to me.”

“Connor said you could see it if you were another hunter or a potential hunter. You’re a hunter, so why can’t you see it?”

Another hunter? That meant there were other supernatural hunters out there and right now, Jeremy was only a potential. Instead of letting him turn into a monster, like one of them, maybe we could get him to help us find one if he could see their tattoos, but if nothing else, Mystic Falls and the people in it had been a master class in teaching me that I couldn’t control everything, or even most things, so I wasn’t sure that what I did or did not want to happen here would be up to me. I’d probably have to roll with the punches the way I seemed to do all the time now. “Honestly?” 

Jeremy nodded, “I could do with some honesty right about now.”

“I think he meant another supernatural hunter, like him, not just any run of the mill hunter . . . and how many female hunters do you think there have been over the last 1000 years, because I can think of two, and I’m one of them. Whatever witch created this supernatural line of hunters probably only had men to choose from at the time, and if it’s passed from one hunter to the next, then it’s probably a boys club only, and that’s why I can’t see it . . . Plus, do you remember what I said to you on that hunt? Deep down, you already have the makings of the wrong kind of hunter, and that seems to be what works best for whatever this curse is.” 

Staring at the back of his hand, he finally said, “You think it’s a curse?”

“Did Connor seem like he was doing it for the greater good or even revenge or because he had to do it?” When Jeremy looked at me, I knew he knew the answer and sighed. _I’m so sorry, kid. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think this is going to end well for you._ “He was aggressive and way over the top. He was hunting out in the middle of the day. He shot the mayor’s son in front of her in her own home . . . That’s a whole other level of hunting, and I’m not sure he could control it. I don’t think he was the same guy who passed all the psych evals he needed to get into the military. Do you?”

“Do you think that’s what is going to happen to me?”

“I don’t know . . . You seem fine right now, and you woke up in a house full of vampires without attacking any of them. Maybe there’s more than one potential hunter out there who has the same mark on his hand, and if he triggers it first nothing will happen to you.”

“But if I do, we could cure Elena?” 

The one person who probably deserved that more than anyone was him. Maybe the idea of destroying a fake cure in front of Stefan out of petty revenge was growing on me. It'd devastate him for a short while, but in the meantime, I could give Jeremy the cure to give to Elena if it's what Jeremy wanted. That'd only happen if Damon and I got to the spoils first though. If Klaus did, he would probably destroy it, and I could live with that, but I couldn't live with him murdering everyone to keep it a secret if he decided to keep it in the off-chance he'd need to use it on an an enemy in the future. If Stefan got there first, he wouldn't learn anything from his bad behavior and would still get everything he wanted. The idea of that infuriated me. Damon and I had to get there first if anyone was going to put Jeremy's needs first, but obviously, I didn’t want Jeremy to be the one to lead us to it.

“I’m not going to let you sacrifice yourself for her, Jeremy. I’m just not. No other vampire in the history of vampires has ever had a chance at a cure, and they either learn how to manage, end it themselves, or get killed, but she’s got a strong safety net around her, so she’ll be fine once she adjusts to all of this, and she wouldn’t want you to sacrifice yourself for her either. Don’t tell anyone about the mark on your hand, because it will get out if you do, and if it means you could be the next hunter, then you can expect a knock on that door from Klaus. He won’t kill you, because he'll need you, but he will send vampires your way, and you’ll have to defend yourself, so you’ll wind up killing one, which will trigger the mark, or he’ll find another way to bully you into doing whatever he wants, which means everyone around you will be in danger until you comply. It wouldn’t be worth it.” 

Looking over his shoulder towards the stairs and then back down at his hand Jeremy said, “He says you’re right. I shouldn’t tell anyone, but you already know I probably will trigger the mark, and when I do, you’ll help me not be like Connor. There’s nobody better I could learn from than you. I just have to listen . . . and expect you to try and steal all my kills.”

Maybe he hadn’t been looking at the stairs. My eyes darted around the room. It wasn’t Connor, although it would explain Elena’s hallucinations if she’d been seeing his ghost. Steal his kills? It hit me out of nowhere, like a punch to the chest, and when I looked back at Jeremy my vision started getting a little blurry. He gave me a lopsided smile and said, “He wants you to guess, and he thinks you’ll have it in one.”

My voice was small as I whispered, “Alec?” 

Jeremy’s gaze traveled from around the side of the couch to a spot near me on the coffee table, and I looked at the empty space. Was he sitting next to me? What I really wanted to do was hug him, but I’d settle for seeing him. Hearing from him like this really just drove home the fact that he was dead. “He says not to cry. It freaks him out . . . but at least it’s not as disgusting as you having no eyes.” Looking away from his general direction, I blinked a couple tears back and swiped the one I lost away before wiping the black remnants of it on my jeans. “And he’s a little upset with me right now.”

I glanced at Jeremy, and he said, “I was supposed to tell you a lot sooner. I tried at the funeral, and he was hounding me before that, but it didn’t work out.”

“Because I had a meltdown?” 

Jeremy tilted his head from side to side to acknowledge that’s why without really wanting to say it before he looked at where Alec was again. “I guess it was really more that Elena freaked out because I tried to touch you, and then Connor got there, and after that, you had your meltdown, but he says you didn’t have it for no reason. Elena and I weren’t listening to you, and in situations like that, there are people who take the lead and people who are supposed to follow without question. Questions can wait until after everything is done, but we didn't do that, and it was a serious situation whether we knew it or not . . . He wants you to know that if he’s out, they’re all out. You did it.” 

And just like that, the damn that’d been holding back everything I was feeling broke. I flicked a look at where I presumed Alec was and then looked at Jeremy as I whined, “You couldn’t have called and told me that before now?” before I needed to hide my eyes. Putting my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands to hide the black tears I couldn’t control anymore, I took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry Alec . . . I don’t know why you’re there and didn’t find peace.”

“He says it’s not your fault. The icy lake disappeared, and then he was in Mystic Falls . . . on the Other side, but he’s thought about it, and there were too many supernatural things surrounding his death, like the talisman, and him agreeing to let his Dad use him as a vampire. It was still his body even if he wasn’t in it . . . but he wasn’t going to have any peace anyway, so he must’ve gone where he really wanted, because who else does he have? He was worried about you . . . and thought he could maybe try to communicate through me, but apparently I suck at it.”

“What about Katie?”

“He says he didn’t know her long enough to spend forever with her . . . It doesn’t mean what he felt was any less real, but she had friends and family . . . and he’s why she died, so how could he be at peace with her?”

I breathed through the queasiness in my stomach, and Jeremy said, “Connor taking me kind of made me think of Alec, and I guess I must have the day before too, because he says he was there, but I can’t remember it. He saw one of Klaus’s guys take me and stuck with me to – “

Looking at him, I abruptly cut him off. “Wait . . . Klaus has ‘guys’? Are his minions witches, vampires, or new hybrids?” 

Jeremy paused for the response from Alec and eventually said, “Compelled vampires from out of town . . . Klaus would rather have hybrids that he could control with a sire bond than vampires, but you killed all his hybrids, so he doesn’t have any other choice, and . . . it’s what he’s been doing for 1000 years, so . . . he may not like it, but he knows it works.”

“So, he really didn’t make any hybrids while he was gone?”

Jeremy watched Alec and then shook his head. “Alec says Klaus’s sister destroyed the bags of blood Klaus took from Elena before the others mummified him. There wasn’t enough left to do anything with it.” 

Well, I guess that explained Rebekah moving out of the house and Klaus leaving her here. It’s also why Klaus dropped whatever he was doing and came back for his one remaining hybrid. He’d actually been telling the truth. “Has Alec been keeping tabs on Klaus?” He seemed to know a lot.

Jeremy looked back to where Alec was and said, “Not just Klaus. He was watching Connor too and . . . who is that? Oh . . . He says Stefan’s as involved in this as he can be. He helped Klaus put Rebekah on ice . . . Alec says it was harsh, and he knows she’s looking for friends, so you should help her out, because she’d be a good ally as long as you keep that dagger away from Klaus . . . Oh, and the dagger our family has? He overheard Klaus and Rebekah talk about it with Stefan, and Klaus mentioned it was a story he’d planned to tell you some day . . . The daggers belonged to the first vampire hunters like Connor. The one our family has was the one made for Klaus, not his Dad . . . and Klaus almost thinks it’s like fate that it wound up in your hands, because . . . you’re the only hunter since they tried to use it on him 900 years ago that’s gotten the drop on him.”

Okay, I liked that story, and I was going to have to find a way to incorporate it into my princess story, because what were the odds, but I didn’t believe in fate any more than Klaus probably did after a 1000 years of seeing how everything could eventually be connected through hidden circumstances. Before I could ask, Jeremy said, “Alec didn’t want you to find out from Klaus, because he doesn’t want Klaus to use it to try and charm you into dropping your guard around him . . . Klaus really wants this cure . . . if what you said is what kept you from showing up yesterday, then Alec says it’s Klaus’s twisted idea of friendship. Klaus believes you’re his only real friend . . . the only one who understands him, and . . . he knows you too . . . better than you think. Klaus knew you’re the only one who would think Elena being cured was a bad thing, because you wouldn’t want her to go back to being used to make hybrids, so he was probably finding another way to get you on his team. He'd rather have you on it than Stefan, because he doesn’t trust Stefan.” 

Yeah, he knew me well enough to know I would’ve gotten rid of the cure for him, which would’ve ultimately put me on his team. I nodded to let Alec know I would keep all of that in mind, and Jeremy said, “He wants us to know that when Klaus had me, it was so I could draw the hunter’s mark for him.”

“So Klaus knew you could see it?”

“Yeah . . . “ Looking at Alec, Jeremy said, “Alec doesn’t think Klaus knows it means I have one now, but I definitely shouldn’t be telling anyone about it . . . and he says you were right. When it’s finished, it’ll act as a map to the cure. He doesn’t have much else to add to anything you’ve said about Connor, except that the type of hunter Connor was has a name. They’re known as The Five, and since you’re you, you’ll probably know how to research that or might even know what it means . . . He also says this is closer to what he had in mind . . . him getting places we can’t go, so he can be our eyes and ears. He might be dead, but he can still be useful.” 

“You were and are more than useful, Alec.” Probably didn’t help his self-esteem issues that his one point of contact had more than likely shut him out when he got too annoying . . . of course that only happened until Jeremy needed his help with something, and then he was all about hearing what Alec had to say. _You unreliable, erratic teenage boy._ “I think we need to talk about how you treat him, Jeremy. I’m glad he was there when you needed him to be yesterday and the day before that, but where have you been on what he needed you to do for him? You really left him hanging. You left me hanging too. I thought he was still in Hell or had just evaporated into nothing, and you could’ve put me out of my misery a whole lot sooner, but you didn’t. That’s not okay.”

“Hey, I’ve been busy dealing with a sister that’s a new vampire. I’m sure you know what’s that like, and I was there when Bonnie lost her powers, so I’ve had to be her friend too. I have school and a job unlike you. I apparently spent an entire day with Klaus and Connor that I don’t remember. Oh, and then I was taken as a hostage by Connor, and Elena hasn’t painted you as really being up for visitors.”

“Yeah, but would a phone call have seriously been too much to ask?”

He looked from me to the empty space near me and said, “Okay, that was weird. You both said that at the same time.”

“Maybe that’s because you should have called!”

“Uh, you did it again.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at me because of the glare I was giving him. “You know you could’ve stopped by here before now too.”

Oh my god, he and his sister were alike in the most annoying ways. “I get you being wrapped up in your own life, because I know that all of us being wrapped up in our own stuff is how Alec’s Dad was able to get to you the way he did, and you have no idea how sorry I am for that, but do you know who wasn’t too wrapped up in himself to help you? Alec. He died helping you, and you couldn’t take a minute on the phone to do something he needed you to do for him? If you didn’t want to say it over the phone, you could’ve stopped by for 5 minutes before or after school or work, but you didn’t."

"I think you didn’t, because you kept forgetting unless you were thinking about him, and then you’d be able to see him. He’d remind you and was probably annoyed by you not doing it. You’d get annoyed right back and instead of doing it then when you were thinking about it, you intentionally didn’t do it just to be obstinate about it. Then you’d shut him out as a kind of teenage ghost-seer equivalent to slamming your bedroom door shut in his face, and you kept him away until you needed him. He could’ve chosen not to help yesterday or the day before that, but he didn’t, because that’s who he is . . . You might being telling me now, and I will be forever grateful for that, but I didn’t know you were an option, because I genuinely thought I left him behind or worse after what I did, and he was relying on you to tell me I didn’t, Jeremy . . . we both were even if I didn’t know it."

"You’re going to have to do better in the future, and you’d better hope you don’t trigger that mark or whatever it is, because you and I are going to butt heads if I’m the one who has to train you, and you being a supernatural hunter isn’t going to help you with me. You should’ve seen what I did to Connor.”

Planting my face in my hands, I took a couple of slow breaths to breathe through the anger pains I had. I really should’ve gotten more sleep. Blood loss, stress, and no sleep apparently made me cranky. The conflicting emotions I had about Alec, like being glad he was just in the Other Side instead of somewhere worse, annoyed that Jeremy had almost certainly cut off Alec’s only means of communicating with anyone, grief for Alec still being dead, and sadness that Alec couldn’t find peace because he didn’t have anyone else who would be there . . . It was all a bit much. “Yeah . . . Alec says it wasn’t pretty, but if we’re training you won’t do that to me . . . might puke on me though.”

Talking into my hands, I retorted, “Oh, I’ll make sure of it.”

“He says there’s so much he wants to say, and he almost forgot . . .” Of course he had a lot to say. Until two days ago, he’d been on his own for who knew how many days. “He thinks he might know where Imelda is.” Okay, now that was important.


	26. Heroine of the Day

“He’s gone.”

Who, the imaginary Connor in her head? Just like that? “And you feel like yourself . . . with a clear head, and – “

“Yeah, why?”

Of all the shitty things to happen today, this went right to the top of the list above Stefan letting Elena out when she was safe with Klaus, who was really selling this idea that he wanted her for his hybrids; Elena being cursed by a dead hunter telling her to end it all; and Professor Snake suddenly deciding to put an occult exhibit on at the school for what I was sure were nefarious reasons. I looked in the direction of town. “He just made a big mistake.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Jeremy . . . He – “ 

“Eve?!”

The sheer panic in her voice grabbed my attention, and when I looked back at her, it seemed like she was starting to burn. I looked at her hand. No ring. My gaze went to the rising sun. Where was her fucking ring? Where could I take her? I looked around us and then down. The water was the closest, and she had about 5 seconds before she turned into a pile of ash. I reached for her, and at 4, a gust of wind shot out of the woods behind her. I could see an almost invisible blur when it got to us, and at 3 seconds, there was a big splash in the water where I’d been planning to shove Elena.

I was aware that she’d stopped screaming as I looked down in the direction of the splash, so I was sure she was okay when I glanced at her with 1 second to go. Yeah, she was fine, and she looked as confused as I was, but then I saw what was dangling around her neck and went to the edge of the bridge to have a better look at the water. “Alice?” Damon must’ve found them. I hadn’t been to the lake house for a long time, but I knew how to get there. It was nice to know she hadn’t just killed Alice.

“I don’t understand what’s happening right now.”

Without looking away from the water, I said, “It’s Mom’s daylight necklace.”

“I don’t have – “ The second she saw it, Elena stopped and came to the railing to look down at the water with me. 

“I think Alice just saved your life.”

“How did she get Isobel’s necklace? I had that somewhere safe.” She really hadn’t noticed that Damon had taken it how long ago now? Nope. Judging by that look on her face, she’d thought it was where she’d left it, and I bet if I hadn’t told her that it was Mom’s daylight necklace, she wouldn’t have even recognized it, because I’d worn it for months under my clothes before I gave it to Alice, which meant she’d probably had a chance or two to see it and just hadn’t known what it was. She flicked a look in my direction for an answer and startled when she realized that I was staring at her. “What?”

“I gave it to her on the way back from Savannah.”

I started shrugging off my jacket, and Elena asked, “What were _you_ doing with it?”

“It was _my_ Mom’s, Elena.”

Tossing the jacket on the ground, I went for my Converse and started untying them. “So? That doesn’t mean you can just come into my room and steal – “

She was one to talk about stealing things from someone else’s room, and she hadn’t even noticed it was gone until now. “Damon gave it back to me at Dad’s funeral, and you only just now realized it was gone?! How much did it really mean to you?”

I kicked off my last shoe and planted my hands on the railing, but Elena’s hand shot out to grab my arm and stop me. “What are you doing?”

Pointing at the water, I answered, “I’m going to help her find your ring, so you can swap. You don’t deserve it, and at least she appreciates it.”

“Eve.” 

She looked hurt, and I mostly thought, _‘Good.’_ “If you thought you had it locked away in some box all this time and never even looked at it once to remember your birth mom, then you should’ve tried to give it back to me by now, but you didn’t, because you didn’t want me to have it, just like you complain about me having Dad’s ring or the dagger or Damon. What’s mine is not automatically yours . . . You’re a selfish cow, Elena.” 

“Eve, calm down.”

“Calm down?!”

“You’re getting angry.”

“Don’t you think I know that? I can feel the knives of fire in my stomach right now.”

“And you’re really cold . . . and Stefan said . . . Look, if you jump in there, you’ll turn the water to ice. I’ll go.”

It immediately made me back down. “What?”

“I’ll go. I’ll get my ring back, so Alice can have Isobel’s necklace if that’s what you want. Just get inside somewhere before – “

Too late. The anger on its own would be bad enough, but with the newly rising sun, I couldn’t hold it in this time. Turning away from her, I retched once, twice, and got sick all over my shoes and the army jacket that I’d just taken off so the water wouldn’t ruin them. It was really just the icing on the cake of what this horrible day had become. Unfortunately for me, it didn’t stop there, because I didn’t feel any relief after it happened. It hurt worse, and I got sick again and again. Elena dropped down next to me to rub soothing circles on my back, and it slowly seemed to help. I stopped getting sick, and she wrapped an arm around me to pull me to her side as she sat on the ground, but I wasn’t in a position to stop her. Wiping my mouth with my sleeve, I rested my head on her shoulder, and it helped the pain subside a little more when she sighed and said, “I’m sorry, Eve.”

“It’s not your fault . . . I just . . . I’m really tired and cranky today.”

“It’s not about the necklace or the ring. I found out I had this whole other family I didn’t know about, and it’s a huge piece that’s missing from a history I thought knew. I just want to feel connected to it in some way.”

 _Hello, sister sitting right here._ “By having things?”

“I guess more like mementos or keepsakes . . . something that’s from the family I didn’t have.” 

Right. “You didn’t even look at it.”

“But I still thought I had it.”

“Fine. If you want me to find you something, I will, but not the necklace. It’s all I have of her.”

“You let Alice have it.”

“Because she needed it. She uses it every day. It’s important to her for survival, and she knows it’s important to me. She will give it back to me when she can.”

“No, you’re right . . . I know she needs it. She should have it . . . That’s really all you have left of Isobel?”

“I have a picture of she, Katherine, and I that Katherine gave me.”

“That’s okay.” I almost smiled, and she asked, “What about John?”

“I know you have pictures of him - family photos.”

“I do, but when I see them, I think, ‘Uncle John,’ because that’s who he was to me when they were taken. It’s not the same.”

“I burned most of his stuff.” 

“Oh.”

“Actually . . . here.” Reaching into my pocket, I picked a random coin and said, “This was his lucky coin. You can have that.”

Taking it, she turned it over in her hand. “Really? It just looks like a normal quarter.”

“Well, it’s either that, or I think I could find you an old sock?” I could probably steal one from Damon and tell her it was Dad’s.

“An old sock?”

“Yeah, sometimes his stuff would wind up in my hunting bag. I found a sock in there not too long after his funeral. I never would’ve thought it, but apparently you can get emotional over a sock.”

“No, that’s okay . . . I’ll take this and pretend it was his.” I smirked, and she said, “You really don’t have anything?”

“My ring, my dagger, my car. You can’t have those.”

“What about the storage lockers you went to that one time?”

I should probably stop by both my parents’ storage lockers soon. “None of that stuff is sentimental. It’s all practical.” With a sigh, I added, “But we might be able to find you something. You just can’t have any of the weapons, and I have to okay any of Mom’s research if you decide you want some of that.”

“I think you just don’t want to share.”

“I grew up an only child and still had to share what little attention my parents could give me with you. And what happened to your bike anyway? Did it get thrown away? Don’t you have any pictures of it at all, because if you do, then you have a lasting memory of something your invisible parents gave you.” 

She considered it and then bobbed her head. “That might work . . . Were there any other things they got me?”

“I think there was a pink tea set and - ”

Her head tilted to the side, and she quickly said, “I think I still have that somewhere. It might be in the attic.”

“Okay, well then you get that and leave my stuff alone.”

“I’ll look for it when I get home . . . Are you feeling any better?”

“Not perfect, but better.”

“You’re pushing yourself too hard. You need to take it easy with this curse.”

“It’s not the curse. It’s the blood loss.”

“Was it bad?” I nodded, and she asked, “How bad?”

“I don’t want to tell you, and you don’t want to know, so don’t ask me.”

“That’s not who I thought he was, and if it is, then I should know . . . He’s just been acting so different lately.”

“As opposed to how he’s acted since he came back from being on a road trip with Klaus?”

“This seems different.”

“He drove you off the Wickery Bridge. He hasn’t exactly been Saint Stefan for a while now . . . Maybe he seems different, because you’re different.”

Grasping at straws to pinpoint what the problem was, she tried, “I think it’s because he’s never lied to me until recently.”

“I’m sure he has by your standards.” She opened her mouth to argue, and I added, “Unless you really don’t consider withholding information lying, then I’m sure he didn’t introduce himself as ‘Stefan the Vampire’ when you met him, and I doubt he even told you that you look Katherine right off the bat, but you forgave him for that. Of course, you still hold me not telling you I was alive against me along with pretty much anything else I don’t tell you straight away, but I don’t want to get into that right now . . . All I’ll say is that when he feels guilty, he does stupid things with determination, and right now, he feels guilty for you being a vampire, so I wouldn’t expect him stop his crusade anytime soon.”

“But I already told him that if he hadn’t done what I wanted, then Matt would be dead, and I couldn't live with that.”

“How things worked out might be okay for you and I, but Stefan did love you right into a watery grave.” I wanted to see what she actually thought about what he was trying to do. Everyone else had ideas on it, but nobody had actually asked her what she wanted. “He’s been secretive, because he’s trying to find you a cure. He wants you to have a chance at a normal life again, and he’s desperate to achieve that, so it makes him very dangerous to anyone who gets in his way.”

“There’s a cure?”

I wouldn’t say she was anywhere near enthusiastic about a potential cure, but she was also downplaying how she felt about it, because it had to have registered more than that. “That’s what I hear.”

“What does that have to do with what happened yesterday?”

Still not going to talk about the cure itself, huh? Maybe she just didn’t want to get her hopes up. “The invisible tattoo that Jeremy could see on Connor was a map to the cure. I wanted to kill Connor. Stefan wanted him alive . . . and you should know that if your curse is gone, it means Jeremy’s has begun.”

“Jeremy’s?”

Sitting up, I looked at her and said, “The timing is just too suspect. It had to be Jeremy. He’s going to become like Connor . . . stronger, faster, and hellbent on killing vampires, including you.” Before she could ask, I said, “I found out this morning that he had an invisible mark on his hand, and I told him not to tell anyone, because I didn’t want Klaus to find out about it. I said I wasn’t going to let him sacrifice himself to find you a cure, and you wouldn’t want that either.”

There was fear in her eyes, and from my perspective, there should be. “So, are you saying that’s why my hallucinations stopped? He made some kind of a deal to - “

“Not a deal. It really is more like a curse. He triggered the hunter’s mark by killing a vampire.”

“What?”

“I’m speculating here, but if he never killed a vampire, then I don’t think he would change. It’s just that if Connor was haunting you, and now he’s not, then I think it’s because the next hunter must’ve been activated, and with your curse driving you here, I think Jeremy is the most likely candidate, especially since most of the other potential hunters will probably never run into a vampire in their lives. We live in a town full of vampires, and I doubt he killed one of your friends, so one of them probably created a new vampire for him to kill, or he was given a sacrificial one from Klaus . . . Either way, I’m pretty sure he is now a supernatural hunter.”

Looking in the direction of town, she asked, “Who do you think helped him?”

“Probably all of them. It’s what they do . . . Bet they got that Professor Snake guy involved too.”

“Professor Shane? Why would they – “

“Oh, he just happened to be in town today doing an Occult exhibit at the high school, and he was making all kinds of creepy professor eyes at Bonnie.”

“You went to school?”

“Well, you were safe in Klaus’s safe room, and when I heard Professor Snake was at the school, I had to go, because what the hell is he doing trying so hard to get Bonnie’s attention, especially when I called him out on it, but no teachers actually saw me, and Matt agreed with me that there’s something wrong with him, so he’s looking into it.”

“You talked to Matt?”

“Yeah, I guess he was suffering with some pretty heavy survivor’s guilt. You did become a vampire, and it didn't help when he heard I came back a little wrong too. I was pretty sure you'd talked to him already and told him not to feel bad about it, so I thought maybe he needed to hear it from me too? I told him not to sweat me dying. It wasn’t his fault, and because he lived, I got to save a whole bunch of souls including Alec, so he said at least some good came of it and relaxed a little.”

“How much did I miss today?”

“Loads . . . Alec’s been talking to Jeremy from the Other Side, so – “

“What?! Jeremy’s known you got him out this whole time? Why didn’t he say anything?!”

At least she understood how important that had been for me to know. That was something. “I already gave him a hard time about it. I guess his plate has been kind of full lately, and Alec was annoying him, so he was trying to ignore him, but Alec’s been keeping an eye on things. He’s like our spy on the Other Side, and he found Imelda . . . She’s been at the lake house with Alice.”

Elena looked over her shoulder again towards the water. “She’s been down there for a while.”

“Yeah, she can’t really come back up until she finds that ring.”

“I should probably help her.”

“Probably.”

Elena went to get up, but stopped and looked back at me, like she had something she needed to say. “You did a lot today, and then you must’ve come looking for me, because you’re here.”

“Most of my days are pretty jam packed.”

“You might normally be able to handle a day like today, but you were run down from yesterday, and you did it anyway.”

“Because it had to be done.”

“But . . . I guess what I’m trying to say is – “ Pointing at my shoes she said, “Eve, that only happened because you pushed yourself too hard after what happened yesterday. I need to know how bad it was, because I think it was really bad. The only other time you’ve been sick like that was after you came back from being dead.”

“I usually keep myself from getting sick, but it’s not like I haven’t needed to do it.”

“But the point is that you usually can stop yourself from getting sick, and you couldn’t this time. I need you to tell me what happened yesterday. I really need to know.”

I’d been hoping we’d moved on from this. If she knew, she’d probably break up with Stefan. Their relationship had run its course and died in that car when she did. I just didn’t want to make the situation worse, because if it was already going up in flames, then why turn myself into the bad guy by adding more fuel to that? Did I really have to tell her? “Elena, I think it’s best for everyone if what happened yesterday stays in those tunnels.”

Getting to her feet, she sniped, “Fine. I’ll just go ask Damon.“

Damon would probably love to be bearer of bad news on this one, but I didn’t want her seeing him as the only one she could rely on, because that’d just make this whole sire bond problem worse. Also, where was Damon if Alice was here without him? I should probably make sure Imelda hadn’t done anything to him. Elena turned to leave, and I sighed at her persistence. On a good day, I might find it admirable, but today I just found it annoying, so if she wanted it that bad, I’d let her have it. “How graphic do you want me to be?”

She stopped. “I don’t need to be protected. Tell me everything.”

“Just remember that you asked for it.” She rolled her eyes and put her hand on her hip, like she was waiting, and I should get on with it. Looking away from her, I shook my head and took a deep breath. “When Damon found me, I think I might have been brain dead, and - ”

Her hand slid from her hip, and she quickly asked, “What does that mean?”

“It means . . . Look, I can’t say for sure that I was, but - “ Briefly touching the side of my head where I’d been hurt, I said, “My skull was caved in . . . Damon said it felt all wrong when he touched it, and I was as lifeless as when I was dead . . . no tension in my muscles or resistance of any kind. I was just gone. My brain stem was probably still working just enough to make my heart beat, but it was weak. I don’t know how long Damon spent trying to pour blood down my throat. I couldn’t swallow it, so I’m guessing most of it went into my lungs. I think any damage done by that was fixed by the blood itself. My theory is that it got absorbed, because it’s vampire blood and different than most other liquids, but fluid in the lungs? Still not good until it’s gone, and because it’s such an unusual way to get vampire blood into someone, it’s probably why it still wasn’t enough for me to know who Damon was or remember the last few days when I did wake up, but at least I could swallow then, so he could give me enough blood the normal way to finish fixing me. He may have drowned me with his blood without meaning to do it, but he wouldn’t give up, because he didn’t know if my ring would work anymore, or if I’d just get sent back to Hell or somewhere worse.” 

There were tears in her eyes when I finished, and she turned to look away from me with a nod. Her jaw was set, so they weren’t tears of sadness. They were of anger, and that started creeping into more of her features. She did used to always get angry when she found out I’d been hurt while she’d been blissfully unaware of it. I guess that hadn’t changed now that she was a vampire, but I still didn’t really understand it. “I’m okay now though.” Nothing. “Elena?”

“He tried to kill you.”

“He tried to turn me.” 

When her eyes came back to mine, they were wide, and she started to shake her head. “No.”

“He knew I wasn't sold on this whole cure idea, because it'd put you right back into being Klaus's means to make hybrids, so he wanted to motivate me to help find the cure by turning me. He didn’t do it thinking it’d be permanent.” 

“That doesn’t make it okay!” Her head shook a little harder, like if she did, it’d shake the truth out of her head, and then she was looking at the town again. “He’s the one who did this to Jeremy, isn’t he?”

“He probably helped, but Jeremy knew the risks, and he chose it anyway . . . I’ll help him.” When she looked back at me, I added, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t turn out like Connor.” 

I didn't know what the look she gave me was supposed to mean, but it didn't seem like the relief I'd thought it would be. Setting her eyes back on the town, she muttered, “I need to go find him.”

Jeremy? Stefan? It didn’t matter. She was gone either way. 

Glancing down at the bridge, I sighed before making a face as I got to my knees and reluctantly reached for my jacket. Using two fingers, I tried not to touch the material more than necessary as I searched one of the pockets. Wrong one. I lifted the collar where there seemed to be the least amount of goo and turned the jacket, so I could dive into the other pocket and found the vial I needed. Wiping my fingers on my jeans, I opened the lid and scooped some of the black goo into it, so I could give it to Meredith. She’d been calling and wanting to set up another meeting. She had some of the lab results for the blood we’d taken, and I suspected that just like with my internal temperature, they’d be normal if Damon said my blood had smelled and tasted normal, but I should confirm that. I knew Imelda might be in the picture now, but my logical brain still wanted answers and to figure out this dark magic stuff. 

When I was done, I carefully put the cap back on the vial and set it on a clean part of the bridge next to the puddle of black goo before getting to my feet and going to the railing. Vampires might be able to hold their breath for insanely long amounts of time, but they could still drown or suffocate, which would not be pleasant for her to experience, and in her momentary death, she’d probably float to the top of the water. She really couldn’t resurface until she had that ring. I needed to help her find it. Hopefully, there was so much water down there, it wouldn’t freeze, and I wouldn’t get stuck under it. If it did freeze, then I’d have to figure something else out . . . maybe I should do that before jumping down there, just get my car, drive to the hardware store and buy some magnets. Would magnets even work? What kind of metal had been used to make that ring . . . couldn’t exactly get a deep sea metal detector here, or I would . . . If I left for as long as it took to find something in town, would Alice think she’d been abandoned? 

I decided that she probably felt that way now, and dragging my fingers along the riverbed to find a tiny little ring might take forever, but at least she wouldn’t be alone down there, and maybe she didn’t even know the ring was down there, so she wasn’t looking for it, or maybe she was and was just looking in the wrong area. Elena hadn’t been in the right state of mind to even use the motor skills necessary to throw the damn thing, so she’d probably just dropped it over the side. If that’s what she did, then the undercurrent would’ve pulled it to a resting place somewhere under the bridge. I could give Alice an idea of where to look and take as many trips to the top as I needed for air until we found it. Yeah, that’s what I’d do. The heroine of the day needed help out of her current predicament and had been down there on her own for long enough. “Hey, Alec, if you’re around, wish me luck.”


	27. Welcome Back

_I found it. I found it!_ We’d been at this for a while, and I’d been about to run out of air again. Wrapping my fingers around the ring, I reached out and tapped Alice’s shoulder with the back of my hand. She still looked like a mermaid to me with that bouncy blonde hair of hers fanning out around her head, an angry mermaid, but definitely a mermaid. Taking the ring from my hand, she didn’t even put it on before kicking her way behind me, wrapping an arm around my waist and rocketing me up to the surface. I gasped a giant breath when I broke through. It almost made me miss the airy voice behind me muttering, “Of all the boneheaded things for you to do . . . You had no business jumping down here like that.” 

What was she doing? Did she think I was drowning? She still hadn’t let me go. Maybe she was going to drag me out of the water, because she hadn’t been able to do it yet. Well, if it meant I got a free lift to the bank, I might as well take it. I could do with a rest. “Helped you find it though, didn’t I?”

“I didn’t need your help. I would’ve found it eventually. Jumping from bridges . . . you clearly haven’t learned anything from what happened.”

She was really annoyed with me. I guess she had tried to push me to the top a couple of times when I first got down here, and I might’ve threatened her with a stake once, so she’d stop. It probably meant her worry and irritation had grown to what it was now. “You were alone down here, and you did need help, so I helped. Get over it . . . We’re both okay, and that’s the main thing.”

“Except you’re not okay. You’re like an ice cube.” Pulling me onto the shore, she didn’t let me go until she had me on my feet. Turning me by the shoulders to check me over for injuries her face fell when she saw the icicles starting to form on my skin. “Is this because of the curse Damon was talking about?” 

Shrugging out from under her watchful eye, I started heading up the bank, so I could get back to the bridge and my car. “You might think I feel cold, but I thought the water was a touch too warm. I’m fine.”

“He didn’t say it was this powerful.”

“If you think this is bad, wait until you see where I got sick earlier.”

“He should’ve told us.”

“I’m willing to bet he did.”

“But instead of antagonizing her, he should’ve made her understand.”

I glanced back at her when I got to the top and waited until she was on even footing with me to ask, “What did she do to him?”

“Nothing . . . well, she trapped him in the house and said you had to go get him if you wanted him, but . . . if she’d known it was this bad, she wouldn’t have left.”

Imelda did a runner? Think I preferred it when she was agoraphobic, but she was clearly getting better. Turning towards my car, I grumbled, “Great . . . I’m going to put that as the second worst thing to happen today just below Jeremy becoming one of The Five.”

“The Five? I thought they died out a long time ago.”

I stopped to look back at her. “You’ve heard of them?”

“I was planning to leave the continent 900 years ago because of them, but I thought Klaus killed them all.”

“He did, and then their marks were passed on to the next generation of hunters, and those hunters became strong, fast, and just as determined to kill vampires. Jeremy’s one now.”

“Oh, Imelda’s not going to like that either. She’s been really worried about him.”

“Then maybe she shouldn’t have done a runner.” 

Carrying on across the bridge, I picked up my vial, daintily went through the pockets on my jacket to get what weapons were there and my keys, then went to the trunk of my car to get a pack of matches and a bottle of Damon’s bourbon that I’d managed to take before he moved all the rest to new hiding places. I got the best bottle first, so wasting it this way would do to make my point on the bouncy castle. When I came back, Alice was staring at the black goo. “This came out of you?”

She took a step back when I started dousing my clothes and the black puddle with the alcohol. “Yep.”

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t want anyone else to come into contact with it, because I don’t know what it’ll do them, so I’m getting rid of it.”

“What if you set the whole bridge on fire?”

I hadn’t considered that, but it was a wooden bridge. Pausing, I looked at her, and then shrugged, “Guess we’ll have to get out of here before that happens.”

“But couldn’t you just throw it over the side?”

“What if it contaminates the water?”

“Is fire really the only way?”

It’s the only one I had available to me right now, but fire and vampires didn’t mix, so I could understand her being hesitant about it. Tilting my head in the direction of the car, I said, “You should probably get in.” Being under the water had helped me as much as it had her with protection from the sun, but I should get out of the sun again soon, because the reprieve would only last so long, and I still had to get home. I had a blanket in the backseat that I could use. Tossing her the keys, I added, “You can drive if you want . . . since you’re back.”

“Back? Oh, I don’t know. If Jeremy’s – “

“Leave him to me . . . Your room’s still the same.”

“I wasn’t sure if you’d want me back after the last time I saw you.”

I stopped myself from lighting a match. Is that why she’d stayed away this long? “Is it because you kept telling me to watch my language or because you let Klaus die? Because either way, I’m over it.”

“Really?”

“I’m probably the one who should be apologizing to you on both accounts, Alice. If Bonnie hadn’t saved Klaus, then it might be a different story, but she did, so I can technically say that I overreacted even though in the moment I believed they were all going to die, and as for the language? I’m going to curse, and if you don’t like it, then whatever, I don’t care. It’ll annoy you more than it does me . . . probably shouldn’t have gone overboard with it the way I did though . . . and I’m sorry I left you behind to deal with Damon on your own. I know he scares you."

“He wasn’t bad until we got to Elena’s. It’s like he bottled it up, because he was so focused on you, but when Imelda wouldn’t let him in the house with you, he got a little scary. He was going to take you home, but she said the heretic could bring you inside, and I told her I didn’t know where she got the idea that I was one of those things, but I wasn’t, and before we could argue about it, he gave you to me . . . I asked her why she didn’t kill him when he started acting up and throwing things into the house or when he yelled at Elena, because both made her so angry that she was still talking about it days later, and she said that she figured he was number one on your list of untouchables, but him making sure you were the center of attention when he thought you were about to be forgotten and giving you to me even though it was clear to her that he didn’t want to let you go were what held her back . . . She still thinks he’s rude, and she doesn’t like him much. She says it’s a crime against nature that a monster like him looks like that.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, and she smiled. “Does she still call you a heretic?”

Alice shook her head. “She told me what you said, so I told her some spells I used to do to prove I didn’t siphon magic, and she tried them. She liked them so much that she said she was going to steal them, but I told her she could just have them, since I can’t do magic anymore . . . I think we might be friends, but she doesn’t want to admit it. It’s one of the things she said when she left, that she had to have a good hard look at herself when she had vampires coming to her door looking for help and one living with her . . . She just needs more time after what happened to Elena. She wanted you to know that she will look into how to get rid of the curse without killing you, but she’ll find you when she’s ready, and she’s sure you’ll be fine until she does. She also said that when you go to let Damon out, it’s a spell that acts as a reverse invitation.”

“Do I have to own the property?”

“She said you’d ask that and to try it and see what happens.” 

Okay, that sounded interesting. Was I a co-owner of the lake house? I knew Jeremy and Elena were, but did my Dad find a way to include me too before he died? With my ring, I hadn't really died in a permanent sense, so the seal to the lake house should still work for me if that was true. Had Imelda found documents when she went snooping at Elena’s? I mean she must’ve done that, because how else did she even know where the lake house was. Photos maybe. I suppose she could’ve just asked where they were taken and remembered it when she left. “She was able to let you into the house?”

“Well, she was technically still a guest of the Gilbert family, so she was able to do it there too . . . Damon said you told him where we were. How did you know?”

“I spoke to Alec earlier.”

“Alec?”

“Yeah, he’s um, still dead, but he’s on The Other Side now, so Jeremy can talk to him. She must’ve said something about the lake house when they were living together, or they heard about it together . . . maybe he caught her snooping through family stuff, or he was doing the same thing and knew she’d found whatever it was first, because she left something behind, but however he figured it out, he deserves all the credit for it. I would’ve never guessed it if it weren’t for him.” Toying with the match in my fingers, I added, “It upsets me that he doesn’t have anywhere that he can find peace, but at least he’s not trapped by the talisman anymore. I’d take having the curse every day for the rest of my life if it means he’s out.”

“Was it as bad as Aja said it was?”

“I couldn’t see it, but it was Hell, so he was being tortured. The other souls that were trapped there were too. The talisman is really gone, right?”

“How could you not know that? You’re here.” 

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just wondering if he’s the only one who made it out, because he’s who I made the sacrifice for when it happened. I didn’t think it was a sacrifice at the time. I just woke up with no explanation for it, so I didn’t know I was out at first . . . sometimes I still wonder if I’m being honest. I was only gone for a little over a day, and I came back to a world that seems completely different.” 

She looked a little perplexed as she studied me. I think she was trying to determine if I was teasing her, but it must’ve become clear to her that I wasn’t. “I can assure that it’s gone. I was holding it when it happened. The longer you were dead, the more Imelda kept saying she wanted to check the talisman, and I knew that despite the protection spell she was using, that was really the pull the talisman had on her, so I took it to keep her or anyone else from touching it, because I told you I would before you gave it to her, and at the lake house, it got really hot in my pocket. I’d just taken it out when it exploded. Specks of it flew in my eye, and it hurt so bad. Imelda made sure the dust on the ground didn’t have any magic attached to it anymore, and when she was sure it was gone, she felt so proud of you for getting rid of it. She kept saying how amazing it was while she cleaned it up with a dustpan. I think her good mood saved my life.”

“Otherwise she would’ve killed you when you couldn’t see?” 

She nodded emphatically. “As soon as she didn’t need me to keep it safe anymore, I was sure she would.”

“Then why did you go with her?” 

“Because she was terrified when those men came to the house, and she was just as scared to leave. I felt sorry for her, so I picked her up and ran her out of the house before they saw us. I think she would’ve killed me when I put her down too, but I reminded her I had the talisman . . . I told her how bad Aja said it was in its prison world and asked her if she really wanted to go there, because she would if she killed me and then couldn’t stop herself from touching it. She got all sulky and said she didn’t need me telling her how bad it was, because she had more power in her little toe than Aja, but she also didn’t kill me, because she knew I was right.”

I wanted to give praise where it was due. “That was really smart of you to say, Alice.” 

She bowed her head and shook it with a bashful smile. “I’m not so sure about that. I didn’t think you’d succeed so soon. She got scared again when we got to town and again when went to the bus station and even when she just saw the bus, so I said I’d go with her, and I was planning to leave when we got to the lake house, but she said she needed some clothes and toiletries, so I went into the nearest town to get her some. I’d just gotten back when the talisman started getting hot.”

Nah, Imelda wouldn’t have killed her after all of that. “She felt like she was in your debt, Alice, and it’s not a place she’s used to being, because she’s always the one people go to for help, so she probably didn’t know how to show any appreciation. Her way of doing that was to send you out to get her stuff as a way to let you escape. I mean, it had to be, because I'm pretty sure that cabin still has clothes in it, and I'm fairly certain it’s fully stocked with soap, shampoo, and toothpaste too, but when you didn’t take her up on her free pass and came back with the things she’d said she needed, she wasn’t expecting it, and she may not have known how to react to it, but she wouldn’t have killed you at that point unless you turned on her, which she would’ve fully expected you to do, but you didn’t.”

Taking a deep breath, Alice considered it. “That might explain why she asked me what she did. My eyes wouldn’t stay healed because the particles from the talisman kept scratching them, and I kept bleeding. I still couldn’t see when she got done with the dustpan, and she ordered me into the bathroom, so she could help wash out my eyes. I thought it was because she wanted to honor you getting rid of the talisman by helping your ‘roommate,’ because that’s kind of what she implied, but she asked me the same thing you did . . . about why I’d stayed even though the talisman could’ve been destroyed at any moment. She said she knew I wasn’t as dopey as I acted, and I had to know that as soon as it was gone, she’d want to set me on fire. I told her it was because she’d needed help . . . She said then maybe I was dopey, and I told her that you said I wasn’t a genius, but I was smarter than I let myself think I was . . . She just goads me sometimes, and I think she could see that she upset me, so instead of apologizing, she said that you told her that I used to help people who were sick and dying . . . and that I wasn’t a killer. I could stay if I wanted, but I couldn’t feed on anyone, and if she even suspected that I had, I was done. I told her I prefer blood bags anyway.”

Yeah, after her switch broke, Alice probably didn’t like hearing what people thought when she bit them. “And that’s when the Adventures of Alice and Imelda began . . . the Thelma and Louise of our time.”

“Who are Thelma and Louise?”

I laughed. Poor Alice hadn’t had much of a chance to experience the modern conveniences of a TV or computer in that colonial disappearing house and probably rarely got to go to the cinema with that husband she’d had. “It’s a movie. You can watch it when you get home.”

She briefly bit her cheek in uncertainty before giving me a nod. “If you’re sure you don’t mind, then I think I’d like to come back.”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.” After a brief pause, she asked, “So, Bonnie saved Klaus?” and it was none too subtle. Bet that hadn’t been the best news for her to hear. She really didn’t like Klaus. 

“Yep, with dark magic apparently, and now she’s been cut off . . . I know she hardly knows you and with this being a small town, she probably thinks of you as an outsider, but it might be worth a try for you to talk to her. She’s vulnerable right now, and there’s a guy who wants to use that to try and get her to do something. I don’t trust him at all, so if you could help talk her through it and give her support, it might keep her from making a big mistake.”

Happy to have a task, she asked, “What does he want her to do?”

“I’m not sure, but he was at the school today doing a presentation on some guy named Silas and – “

Her eyes widened. “Silas?!”

“Yeah . . . I don’t know if it’s connected to that, but he seems to base his lessons on things he wants her to hear.”

She quickly said, “I’ll talk to her,” and I had to ask, “Is it that bad?”

“Very . . . End of the world bad.”

My eyebrows arched. Thank you instincts. “Well, okay then . . . something like that wouldn’t require a Bennett witch would it?”

“I don’t know. It might . . . Kol would know. He’s traveled in witch circles for years, but you shouldn’t get him involved. If Klaus is evil, Kol is just as bad, but he’s more childish, and they both find cruelty funny.” 

That was the first time she’d talked about Kol, but she’d obviously kept tabs on him. I had so many questions about her backstory, but she wasn’t very forthcoming, and I guess now wasn’t really the time to be asking. I should probably burn the bio-hazard I’d left, go home, have a shower, get changed, drop the bio-hazard sample off with Meredith, and then go let Damon out of his cage. It’d be a little while yet before I could sleep, but I think I might for at least a day when I did.


	28. Vacation Days For A Killer And a Martyr

Day one:  
I got out of the car and looked around at my surroundings. Everything seemed so much smaller than I remembered it being, but then I was bigger now. It was prettier. Being older allowed me to appreciate it more, and I’m guessing the reason there were flowers in blossom everywhere at this time of year was because of one of Alice’s spells that Imelda had done. I wondered how many other little things I’d see that would show Imelda had left her mark. It felt a little like a taunt, like, 'I was here, and you just missed me,' but I knew she'd just been having fun for a change and trying to make herself feel better. 

My eyes flicked to the lake house, and I saw Damon straight away. He was standing at the screen door with his head resting on his forearm, like he was a prisoner waiting to be released. “She’s gone.”

Coming up to the door, I nodded. “I know.” Imelda needed more time, and I understood that. She’d been put through a lot, and a break would do her some good. I also knew that if she told Alice to let me know that she’d research what to do about my curse so she could get rid of it without killing me, she would, and if she was on her own now, she’d put almost all her time into it, because she didn’t have anything better to do, especially since it sounded like she was done with other hunters too. Her extra free time meant there was a light at the end of the tunnel for me. I wasn’t going to worry about it, and there was no need to go to Klaus for anything on this one.

Opening the screen door, I gestured to the great outdoors and asked, “Damon, would you like to come out?”

And would you look at that. Imelda’s snooping had paid off. Dad must’ve made sure I was a co-owner before he died, and it must’ve been legit, because the invisible barrier dropped, and Damon stalked past me. After the day I’d had that was really getting closer to two at this point, it was kind of cool to find out I partially owned a house. I’d never had that, and I liked the theatrics of how Imelda let me know about it.

Still holding the door open, I watched Damon get about 20 feet away before asking, “Hey, where are you going?” and he stopped. “Don’t you want to explore or . . . I don’t know . . . take a day off, because I really need one, possibly two, so I’m staying, but if you want to go - “

He was back in a flash and picked me up. I wrapped my legs around him as he walked us in through the door, and his instant change of humor made me laugh. “I didn’t think you took time off.”

“Neither did I, and there is so much going on right now, but I have my phone, and I’ve delegated, so we’ll see how they do, and I did say that I don’t feel that same drive for a bigger and bigger fight . . . I just - ”

Wrapping his hand around the back of my head, he pulled me to him, and my mouth crashed over his. The stress I’d felt started to fade away. It was being with him, but it was also being in a place that wasn’t negative the way pretty much everywhere in Mystic Falls seemed to be these days, and that included the Boarding House. I was in no rush to get out of my lake house and on to something else. I was just focused on the here and now, his touch, his taste, his strength and gentleness. Unwilling to really break the kiss, he murmured, “I say we stay here . . . and I explore every room in this house with you,” in the moments between.

I exhaled, “Twice?” and he smiled.

Moving us into a room, he answered, “As many times as you want . . . and then we’ll take it outside.” Couldn’t say I disagreed with that idea. It’d been good at the campfire, but then I thought being anywhere with him like this was exciting. My back hit something soft, and he climbed over me saying, “In this room, we have a couch,” and it made me giggle. Lifting the bottom of my shirt, he added, “You always save your best laughs for me,” and I sat up to help him get it off over my head. Coming back to me, he paused to have a look, and then paused a little longer.

His fingers went to touch the turquoise material of my bra as he quietly said, “I like this on you,” and then his eyes darted up to mine. He hadn’t intended for it to be a compliment as such, just an honest statement about something that’d caught his attention, and if he liked it, he liked it. That wasn’t a compliment I could dismiss. The look in his eyes said that he was about to grin at that, because again, he thought it should be wholly ineffectual as far as compliments go, and I lunged forward to capture his lips and let him know it wasn’t. With a laugh of his own, he gripped my hips and used just a fraction of his extra strength and speed to pull them out from under me.

My back hit the cushions, and as our tongues melded, his hands slid over mine. It was hard for me to let my guard down in any waking moment, but the closest I ever felt to being safe enough to do it was with him, and it didn’t have to be when we were like this or even every time we were, just random moments when my internal struggle for survival reached a breaking point and I was able pass guard duty over to him for a little bit of peace. The last few days had been a trial, so I was more than happy to do that now, and in a place that I knew was safe, it happened more completely than anywhere in Mystic Falls. Even when he moved to my neck and suddenly froze before resting his forehead on my shoulder to take carefully drawn breaths, I wasn’t stressed about it. “Did you bring blood?”

Forget about regular discussions about safe sex with a vampire. They couldn’t get you pregnant, and they weren’t carriers for human diseases. They could, however, bite you in most unpleasant ways and kill you if they lost the run of themselves. A vampire Damon’s age should have control over that urge under normal intimate circumstances, but he’d left yesterday morning, and while I’d been running all over town, he’d been locked in here, so he hadn’t fed. I didn’t even know if he’d had anything before we left to go to Elena’s. He was definitely vamping out right now, but I still felt at peace. He might think he was about to bite me, but I knew he was fighting it with everything he had, and to be honest, it was probably better that I did stay relaxed, because any tension on my part would have only exacerbated the situation. “It’s in my car.”

He disappeared a second later, and I’m not sure how long he was gone. Enough time for him to down however many blood bags he thought he needed, so not long, but I was only aware that he was back when I was lifted off the couch, and my light slumber was disrupted. Resting my cheek on his shoulder, I mumbled, “What about – “

Damon exhaled another laugh. “There’s you tired, and then there’s you crashing, and while I love the idea of you falling asleep in the middle of me giving you my best performance to date, you said ‘two days,’ and I’m holding you to that. It can wait.”

Day three:

Well, this was an awful, terrible turn of events.

Yelling over the noise in the tiny dive bar we’d found in the small town near the lake house, Damon sure seemed amused by it. “I thought you said you’d do anything?”

We couldn’t play our Good Vampire, Bad Hunter game here. It was the off season at the lake, so there weren’t many people. We wouldn’t get away with it without anyone noticing, and there’d be no challenge in it even if we could. The circumstances led to a discussion on whether or not compulsion was even required to get someone to do something good with their lives, and that conversation had essentially turned into a game of ‘If you could compel me, what would you have me do,’ which was basically like him daring me to do things, but he’d come out of the gate strong with the first thing he said.

I looked up at the shitty stage with the shitty band and started to shake my head. “There’s no way they’d let me – “

“And that’s why you have me.”

I looked up at him again. “What, are you going to compel my way up there?”

“Yep.”

“I think that might be against the rules.”

Grabbing my hand, he dragged me up there saying, “The rules have to be in there before we start, and you know it.” He hopped up on stage, and the music cut out to the groans of the people who were actually listening. He had a word with the guys in the band and then looked back at me with a smirk before jumping back down in front of me. His smirk grew into a happier grin at the look on my face, and then he laughed. “If you want to throw in the towel, then admit defeat, and we’ll do something else.”

Admit defeat? I’d say ‘never,’ but I was actually kind of close to it. No. I had a point to prove, and I didn’t actually know any of these people. I’d probably never see them again, so did it really matter if I went up there, felt the acute scrutiny of being under their watchful eyes and had a panic attack or passed out or any one of a hundred embarrassing things I might do in front of them? Not to them, just me. I’d just feel a lot more comfortable if the set up was a little different though. “But there’s no piano.“

“I know.” Ducking down to my ear, he added, “And I’ll kill anyone who boos, so you’d better not suck.”

Way to add more pressure. “You’re such a dick.”

He laughed again, and it really spurred me on to do the thing he didn’t think I could do, so it was with spite that I took a breath to fortify myself before glaring at the stage. The protests of the people in the bar seemed to have grown now to include people who hadn’t been listening and were just whining because other people were. _Shut it all out and just get up there._ I left Damon’s side and went to the stage. Planting my hands on it, I jumped up there in one attempt, so I guess it was something that I hadn’t fallen on my face yet. _Shut it all out and take the damn guitar from the guy holding it out to me . . . fuck._ Putting the strap over my head, I looked at the guys in the band. What would they know how to play that I knew?

All they seemed to play were covers, but finding one we both knew would be tricky. I might have one, and it should work with the crowd here, but I hadn’t played it in a while. On the other hand, it was a 4/4 time signature and fairly easy. I suggested it to the band, and they all seemed to know it, but was that because they really did, or because Damon had compelled them to play whatever I wanted? I didn’t know, and I wasn’t going to go back and ask Damon, or I might not come up here again, so I guess there was only one way to find out. Was this guitar even in the right tuning? It should be in D, right? I made sure it was and concentrated on that as I turned back to the front.

When I was sure I was good, I glanced in Damon’s direction. That’s when it became clear to me that he had in no way thought I’d even get this far, and now he was having second thoughts about it in case my curse came back with a vengeance. Well, screw him. He’s the one who put this in motion, and now he had to live with the consequences. Before he could hop back up here and put an end to it, I stubbornly stepped up to the mic, glanced back at the band over my shoulder, and said, “One, two, three, four.”

 _D – one, two, three, four; G – one, two, three, four. Closed hand over the strings. Two, three, four. D – one, two, three, four; G – one, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four._ The rest of the band kicked in on the next bar, and I briefly looked back at them in surprise. I guess they did know it.

A guy in the crowd caught my attention when he yelled, “Woo,” at the right part, and I guess that meant he knew the song too. A few people seemed to be bobbing their head. I guess most people had at least heard _Should I Stay or Should I Go_ from The Clash. Let’s see what they thought about this rendition of it.

_Darling, you have got to let me know._  
_Should I stay or should I go._

Okay, they didn’t seem to hate it. My volume rose a little, and a bit of attitude came with it. Seriously, screw you, Damon.

_If you say that you are mine, I’ll be here til the end of time._  
_So, you’ve got to let me know. Should I stay or should I go._

I tried not to lose my place when the ‘woo’ guy got a little enthusiastic with his own little weird dance, but it was really hard to ignore him.

_It’s always tease, tease, tease._  
_You’re happy when I’m on my knees._

I tossed a quick look in Damon’s direction . . . they might not be booing, but there could be a few deaths tonight after the reaction to that line in a bar full of dirty old men.

_One day it’s fine, the next it’s black._

When he looked up at me, I went back to focusing on the crowd.

_So if you want me off your back._  
_Well come on and let me know_  
_Should I stay or should I go_

Now for the chorus. Rocking back on my heels briefly, I decided to hit it hard and pretend I wasn’t up here.

_Should I stay or should I go now?_  
_Should I stay or should I go now?_  
_If I go there will trouble._  
_And if I stay, it will be double._  
_So come on and let me know . . ._

I made it through the rest of the song without any major mistakes and had held myself together just about as long as I could. There were a few people clapping at the end, a few more cat calling. Before I’d even finished handing the guitar back to its rightful owner, Damon was up on that stage and had me bundled up in his arms. His mouth landed over mine, and I knew exactly what he and his roaming hands were doing. He was making a point of marking his territory in a very public way. People were gonna start throwing stuff at us soon if we didn’t move. I pulled back and asked, “Having second thoughts about how good you think this would be for me?”

He shook his head. “I think you should do another one.”

“Not here. I’ve had about all I can take.”

“You’re better than I remember you being.”

“Nah, you just like me more now, and it’s an easy song.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, like he wasn’t sure he should ask, but did anyway. “Will you play the song you worked on with Rose when we get back?”

I asked a dubious, “You liked it so much you want an encore?” and he slowly nodded. “I don’t have a – “

Looking over my shoulder, he snapped his fingers at the guitarist, said, “Give me that,” and the guy just handed over an acoustic guitar in a stand next to him on the stage.

“You can’t steal – “

Taking my hand as he pulled me off the stage and towards the side exit, he said, “We’ll give it back tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? We got out into the cool night air, and I asked, “You want to stay another day?”

Stopping to come back to me, Damon answered, “Two days, and you’re not cold anymore. You were out in the sun today for half an hour, and you were fine. You didn’t even get that pale when you were up on that stage. You can’t tell me you don’t feel more alive here than you have since before you came out of hiding . . . Mystic Falls is sucking the life out of you, and I think you know it. I think that’s why you left on your own without me pushing you to do it, and now that you’re out, I don’t think we should go back. I think we should stay here as long as you want and then keep on going.”

I didn’t have answer for him, not a definitive one that he’d want. Taking the guitar from him, I went over to a picnic table that was outside and put the strap over my head before taking a seat. The song he wanted to hear actually seemed a little fitting now. Guess I was in another tug of war between what I wanted and what was required. I tuned the guitar and then glanced at him before I took a deep breath and focused back on the strings. I hadn’t played this since Rose died for a reason. It reminded me of her, and I felt like it wouldn’t sound right without her.

_Dream little girl_  
_On lonely street_  
_Little runaway girl_  
_Do it again_  
_Do it again_

He sat next to me, and I didn’t worry about the rhythm or claps or anything like that, just playing. I got all the way to the second chorus without any real problems. It was definitely missing something though.

_Run run run away little girl_  
_Get your fun in this trashy world_

Damon’s arm slid behind me on the table as he leaned into me, and I glanced at him. He took full advantage of the opening, and my hand stopped strumming as I brought it to the side of his face after our lips connected. When he pulled back, he stayed close, but he didn’t say anything. “What?”

“There have been times when I’ve thought that this curse is killing you, but it’s not the curse. It isn’t even Mystic Falls. It’s the people in it, and you know what you should do, but you won’t, because if it’s what’s right for you, then you think that makes it wrong somehow. What do I have to do to change your mind, because right now, I’m thinking that compelling you would be the only option I have.”

“What are you gonna swap out my vervain for water, and – “ He shot me a semi-glare that said that’s exactly what he was thinking, and perhaps this new game hadn’t been the best one for us to play if it was putting notions like that in his head. Sitting back from him, I took a deep breath, and muttered, “So as long as the body is right, it doesn’t matter what’s behind it?”

“What? No. Why would you say that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Something about how me being a mindless robot would be preferable to you having to deal with the real me seems to have wormed its way into the conversation.”

“That is not what I said!”

“Then fix it.“

“Fine!” His voice softened, and his eyes took on a more pleading look as he said, “I wouldn’t do it. I just don’t know what else to do,” but it was the momentary look of abject fear on his face that said he didn’t think that was enough for forgiveness when he was finished that really sold it to me. Didn’t apologize my ass.

Ducking my head, I grumbled, “Don’t look at me like that,” and he took the opportunity to scoot a little closer.

“Like what . . . vulnerable? Does it make you feel guilty?”

I shot him a look for trying to manipulate the situation. “Not this time. I’m not the one who did anything wrong.” He retreated somewhat, and a look of anxiety briefly returned before he could mask it. Looking away from him, I added, “I think it’s more like when you hurt, I hurt, and I don’t like it.”

“How do you think I feel?” I glanced at him, and he said, “I hate all of your little experiments - the blisters, the heat rashes, the overwhelming tiredness – all so you can feel like you have some kind of control over it. Well, here’s a newsflash: all you need to do to get control is leave those people behind. They don’t care about you. Even when it should be more apparent than ever that you actually have feelings, because you turn into a zombie princess every time you’re hurt or angry, they get to blame everything they make you feel on the curse, but I know how deep your scars go, and when you hurt in any kind of way, it really pisses me off.” I didn’t immediately respond, but I suppose I appreciated his ability to pick himself back up and argue even though a minute ago, he’d thought his world was about to collapse. That he felt secure enough with me to do that said something about how strong we were becoming as a unit. Flicking me another little glare, he added, “And I didn’t do it . . . Do you honestly think I’d tell you if I was going to do it at all?”

I dryly retorted, “So, it was said in a moment of frustration.”

“Yes!”

“And when that idea grows roots and starts to sprout with all your vampire love and attention -

“It won’t.” My eyebrow quirked up, and he admitted, “Okay, it might, but I wouldn’t do it. I swear.” Again, I said nothing, and he sighed before leaning closer as he said, “On my life, I swear that I will never compel you.”

“Not good enough.” His eyes narrowed, and I said, “Swear on my life.”

His brow furrowed moderate frustration, and then he finally said, “All right, fine. I swear on your life that I will never compel you . . . Add it to the list of things that Isobel didn’t do, and I, therefore, refuse to do on principle alone.”

Not a conversation I’d thought we’d need to have, but it was good that we had and were continuing to lay out boundaries with one another. I think that’s how relationships were supposed to work. “Then I say we take being here a day a time.”

“We’ll stay tomorrow?” I nodded, and he asked, “And then what?”

“And then we’ll see.” He sat back a little, and I asked, “Hey, you wanna hear the song I was thinking of doing with Caroline? It’s from the same band.”

He rolled his eyes at the implication that we would be going back. When we went shopping, Caroline said she might want to give doing a song a try at the Winter Wonderland charity event, so I told her I’d find one, but I’d already had _The Christmas Song_ in mind. I was a massive fan of the Raveonettes, so I’d started learning their songs the first time I heard them. In fact, when we went to New York, they were the first band I wanted to see the next time they played there. Given what we were talking about, I thought it’d be humorous to try it out on Damon though. With a smirk, I looked at the guitar.

_All the lights are coming on now._  
_How I wish that it would snow now_  
_I don’t feel like going home now_  
_I wish that I could stay_

I glanced at him with a slight smile, and he was quick to say, “You’re just trying to annoy me now.” It made me laugh.

_All the trees are on display now_  
_And it’s cold now_  
_I don’t feel like going home now_  
_I wish that I could stay_

I stopped and laughed again when he put me in a light headlock. “All right. Fine. We’ll take each day as it comes, but I’m gonna make sure that by the time whatever this is, is over, you want to go to New York with me.”

“Who says I don’t already?” He loosened his hold, and I looked up at him. “Come on, Damon, of course I do.”

“Yeah, but you won’t.”

“I will. I don’t know when that will be, but it will happen. I promise.”

Day six:

It was still dark, but lighter and lighter hues of grey would start creeping into the room in another hour or two. I’d always had pretty good vision in the dark, but whatever enhanced night vision I’d come back with from Hell seemed to have worn off after a couple of days, not that there’d be much for me to see up on the ceiling even if I had it. I’d probably still be staring at it with unfocused eyes. I couldn’t sleep. Maybe I was just prolonging the inevitable. This would be my last moment of real peace for the foreseeable future. We were going back today.

It’d be so easy just to stay here another day and another and another until we went somewhere else and the inhabitants of Mystic Falls became a distant memory. Maybe I should. I looked like myself again. I hadn’t been pale in days. Even showers were a lot easier . . . Maybe it’s because here, I’d been taking them with Damon. My transformation wasn’t because my curse was dwindling, and it wasn’t just because I was away from Mystic falls the way Damon thought. It was probably because I was away from the drama _and_ all loved up.

There was a big part of me that didn’t want to go back, but it just wouldn’t feel right not to do it. Damon had a brother, and I had a sister in Mystic Falls. Love them or hate them, they were family, but they were more than that too. They were siblings, and in my experience, siblings were what helped you survive the rest of your family. It’d take a lot to fracture that relationship beyond repair. Less for me, because I was human and didn’t have memories of good times with Elena to counteract the negative, but for the vampire next to me? I’m not sure there’s anything that would ruin he and Stefan permanently as long as they had the time to fix whatever went wrong . . . both had a lot of memories, good and bad, that tied them together.

That made them like magnets. As long as they were both alive, they’d never be able to escape the pull of the other, and I didn’t think that was a bad thing. I glanced at Damon over my shoulder. He looked peaceful. Time apart was good for them too though.

Turning my attention back to the ceiling, I thought about how Mystic Falls itself would always be a draw for him, because to him, it was ‘home.’ Home might secretly mean he was hoping to bump into Stefan when he went back, but it also just meant home. Mystic Falls wasn’t my home . . . I didn’t really feel a connection to the place itself, but I didn’t leave hunts unfinished, and Mystic Falls was a supernatural mess, so it seemed to provide hunt after hunt. If fires stopped popping up there, then I could probably go somewhere else with a clear conscience, but until they did, I’d have to keep putting them out . . . or try to at least. Yeah, we had to go back. Something else was on the horizon, bubbling away under the surface, and it’d boil over soon. I could sense it.

Despite being on vacation, I’d still gotten some calls that I’d had to take. I got one from Matt telling me Professor Snake was connected to Pastor Young, and I was sure that he must’ve hypnotized the Pastor into blowing up The Council given the number of calls made between the two on the day of the explosion. 12 died that day. What if that was by design? 12 was a pretty important number in numerology, and I seemed to remember something about a sacrifice of 12 from somewhere in my Mom's readings. I really needed to go to her lock up and look into it more. 

In addition to the news from Matt, I'd checked in with Jeremy and learned that Professor Snake apparently knew quite a bit about The Five. He hadn’t provided much more information than my powers of deduction had figured out, but Bonnie didn't know that, so she’d gone to the Professor for help when Elena had that hunter’s curse. Hopefully, she hadn’t let Professor Snake worm his way into her life.

Who was I kidding? He had to have just a little by helping Bonnie with something that’d been really important to her. Now she’d feel more inclined to go to Professor Snake the next time she had a problem, and that was his intention. It’s how guys like him worked. Alice had talked to her, and world ending sounded bad, but Bonnie wasn’t going to believe that was part of his master plan if he was pretending to be an affable Professor any time she was around him. People like me or Alice telling her the guy was bad wouldn’t be enough. It needed to come from Elena or Caroline, so I needed to get them on board with what I was saying and let them do the heavy lifting.

Aside from Professor Snake continuing to be a thorn in my side, everything else was pretty calm. Jeremy seemed to be fine for now. Elena was still alive and calling me, so he must be. She’d broken up with Stefan, the way I’d thought she would, and I had no idea how Stefan was doing, but I didn’t really care unless he turned into the Doll Maker again over it. There’d been a few people reported missing in the towns around Mystic Falls, but I thought they were mostly because of Klaus’s vampire associates. Stefan’s body count would be much higher, and when we got back, I should pay those vampires a little visit, get rid of the problem, and the people around Mystic Falls could live their lives in peace.

Maybe I should’ve done it sooner, but I was going to give myself a pass for being away the last few days even though I knew that the calm before a storm should be used for preparation. I’d needed some time off, and it’s not like everything had fallen apart while I was away . . . Caroline might disagree. She was freaking out about Miss Mystic Falls, and that was the only reason Damon and I were going back today.

This week had been a good test of how it’d be if it were just Damon and I, and I thought we passed with flying colors. I mean why wouldn’t we? It’d been just the two of us for so long after I met him that it should work even though our status had changed since then. It was proof that I really could go anywhere with him and be content, because we weren’t in some big city with neon lights and things to do every second of the day. We’d had to make our own fun here, and we had.

We’d invented games and even played some stupid childish ones, like hide and seek with a vampire/hunter twist that turned out to be a blast. We’d explored every room in the house at least twice and the outdoors too. I’d worked on my cooking skills, and we’d both read. We’d gone to the local bar in town. The first night had been an experience with the dares, and the next night we’d played darts and pool and had a good time anyway. We’d had a couple campfires too. It’d been a good week, and it’d been a week full of normal. If you added hunting to that, so I felt like my life had some meaning and all the things he wanted to do in New York, then I think it’d be better.

“We should stay another day.” I looked over at Damon again, and this time, he was watching me. I’d successfully managed to dodge this topic again until now.

“We can’t.”

His hand slid over my stomach and hooked itself around my side, so he could pull himself closer to me as he said, “We can do whatever we want.”

“I already told Caroline I’d come back today.”

Nuzzling into my neck, he murmured, “For what? Some stupid pageant you don’t even want to go to anyway?” and I knew what he was doing. Manipulation through seduction was still manipulation, and now we really did have to go back, because I couldn’t ever let him think that manipulation would work with me in any way.

“Yep.”

Pulling back look at me, his eyes narrowed as they took on a more calculated look. Giving up on the seduction, he nestled into my pillow and asked, “What if I said I needed help on something?”

At least he was trying a different tactic. I’d play along for now. Rolling to face him, I answered, “I’d ask what the problem was.”

The corner of his mouth ticked up into a slight smirk. “My girl is a bit of a do-gooder type.”

“Oh no, not one of those.”

“She can’t help it.”

“No?”

“No, see, she was raised thinking she was going to die to stop a hybrid apocalypse, and I got her out of that, but now she’s transferred it over to every little thing anyone needs help on.”

“And that’s a problem?”

“No, the problem is why she does it.” He hesitated on what he was going to say next, decided he had to say it, and then did. “She still doesn’t think she’s worth more than dying for a cause, and until that happens, she doesn’t think she has any value outside of what she can do for other people. There’s no doubt that she is good at what she does, but when people see that, they take what they can get from her, and with her, that means they can get by with taking everything. She doesn’t give them everything she has because she wants to be in their club and sees that as the price of admission. It happens because all she sees herself as is a weapon for them to use until she finally breaks. She doesn’t know that’s not how it’s supposed to be, so she stays, and I know that if she saw it happening to anyone else, she’d want that person to know they were worth more than that, and she’d kill anyone who hurt that person, because that’s how she was when she met another hunter that was raised like her.” His brow furrowed in concern, and he added, “I could use your help getting her to see that.”

Well, that’d taken a more serious turn than I’d expected. He’d kind of ripped me to shreds, and I didn’t know what to say. “All of that might be true, but – “ My eyes flicked away as I searched for how to respond. “It’s only half the picture.“ Turning my attention back to him, I asked, “Do you love her?”

“More than anything.”

“Then take her as she is.” That’s not what he’d expected me to say, and he’d been in no way trying to imply that he didn’t take me as I was. I slipped my arm under his to hold him a little closer and let him know I knew that. He wasn’t wrong. He just wasn’t entirely right either, and usually he understood me better than that, but I think he was still a little blinded by what happened in those tunnels last week. “She wasn’t developed like other people. She knows now why it had to be the way that it was, but that doesn't change that when she was an infant, she was alone most nights, so when she woke up, who was there to show her that she mattered in her formative years? If she was sick, who was there to tell her that it would get better or to ease her suffering? Who talked to her after a long day spent alone when all her Mom wanted to do was read? Who let her know she was at least as important as an invisible sister? Even on birthdays, a day that was supposed to be a celebration of when she was born, it felt like they were less about her and more about her sister that wasn’t there until she got to open her present. That was something that was just for her. It might’ve always been a keyboard, but it was because she was good at that, and then all those keyboards were smashed to pieces one day, like none of that was important.“

He looked a little lost. I paused when his forehead connected with mine. I don’t think his plan had worked out the way he wanted. “What are you trying to say?“

“I’m saying your girl is more self-aware than you think. It’ll make more sense when I’m done.”

He didn’t come back with anything, so I carried on with trying to paint a more complete picture than he had of me in his head right now. “Back when her Mom had no money, it was a choice between rent, Christmas presents, or heating. Her sister got a bike, and your girl got a crossbow, not heating and a crossbow or a crossbow and the bike she’d secretly thought would be hers and had made sure would be the right color, but a crossbow. It may not have been the gift she thought she was going to get, but it was a great gift too, because it reminded her that while she may have been born to die in a sacrifice, a sacrifice that gave her life meaning, she was also a hunter, and that gave her life meaning too.”

“When she was told stories, they were about hunting. Hide and seek was about hunting . . . game nights were about strategy. Swimming and skating were a reward for doing a good job with training. When she got to sit down and study with her Mom, it was about the occult. She started killing at an early age . . . She wasn’t anywhere close to being able to use a stake, which is why she couldn't play bait yet, but that crossbow got used a lot when she was supposed to be her Dad's back up from a distance . . . until it broke when she was 12 and wound up in an induced coma for a few days. She got her vampire, but she sure didn’t get praise for it, because she didn’t do what she was told AND she missed. One was acceptable, but not both, and she’d rather be ignored than feel like less than nothing. Her sister got praise over a report card. Your girl kills a vampire the way she should – no mistakes - and she gets praise for that one. Her sister that she’s going to die for some day gets a boyfriend, and it’s a big deal, so your girl goes out and kills three vampires on her own. She starts to scare her father, because she was only playing bait at that time, he didn’t even get one, and she was pretty brutal, but at least she gets a ‘good job,’ out of it. At some point, hunting becomes a release valve for everything she’s bottled up, a chance for her to just shut everything else out . . . She could be a killer and nothing else with that background, or she could be a martyr and nothing else . . . but she’s not. There will always be a duality there between the killer and the martyr. She isn’t one or the other. She’s both, and she won’t change. It’s hardwired into her.”

“I don’t want her to change . . . I just . . . ”

“You won’t lose her.”

He started to nod, and I knew I had to do a little bit better on reminding I wasn’t just a martyr. “She made a mistake last week. That’s the real problem here.”

“It wasn’t her fault.”

“Yeah, it was. She’s good, not perfect. She has a weakness, but you have them too . . . vervain, werewolf toxins, losing your ring while in the sun, a guy at the top of your bloodline that just about everyone wants to kill, compulsion from Original vampires unless you poison yourself with vervain, which makes you a little slower and a little less strong, an ability to heal that makes it possible for people to torture you over and over again, and if anyone, including someone supernatural, kills you, then you stay dead.”

I’d felt him relax while I was talking, and when I was done, he smirked before saying, “You really know how to sweet talk a guy in bed, you know that?” It made me laugh, and he said, “What if her ring doesn’t work anymore?”

“What if it’s the only thing keeping her alive?” His brow furrowed, like he hadn’t considered that, and I added, “And there is always the off chance that she forgets to look both ways and wanders in front of a bus.”

I thought I was making a valid point. He thought I was being ridiculous. “That’s gonna let that happen.”

“Yeah? Are you gonna go on a one-vampire crusade to rid the world of buses?”

With a slow smile, he answered, “If that’s what it takes. I am her partner. It’s my job to make up for where she’s weak.”

“Well, she doesn’t sound like a damsel in distress, so partner would be about right considering all the ways you’re weak . . . and she did call you as back up.”

“I think what she actually said was that she was planning to use me as a distraction.”

“Sure, but it’s not exactly like she was planning on sending you home after that. There was a hunter to kill.” He exhaled a soft sigh and gave me a slight nod. He’d be all right with us going back for now, or I’d wind up in the trunk of a car on my way to New York City, but I was leaning more towards the former happening. Time to make sure of that. “Besides, if you think she’s going to let what your brother did go, then you’d be wrong. She has a cure to make him think she’s setting fire to in front of him.”

“Well, now we have to go back just so I can see that . . . I wasn’t sure. She’s been awfully forgiving lately.”

“For dying, which enabled her to save her friend and other people who were suffering in Hell? Sure. For this? Absolutely not . . . And now might be a good to time to ask if this girl of yours would mind that I’m here with you. She sounds a little scary.”

With a grin, he leaned forward to graze his lips against mine saying, “You’re my girl,” before he committed to showing me what that meant to him with the next kiss, and a minute later, he was rolling me under him as he added, “We’re not going back yet.”

That ‘yet’ was important. With each day of fun we’d had away from all the drama, we’d both almost lost that ‘yet,’ but it wasn’t over ‘yet’ either. I suspected that when we were done in here, we’d be taking another shower, and I wasn’t going to rush through that any more than I’d rush through this. Caroline might kill me for being late, but it’d be worth it.


	29. Welcome to the Neighborhood

“Hey, why am I busing your tables? I said no empty glasses.”

I heard Caroline before I saw her and wanted to go somewhere else. Yesterday had been bad enough. She hadn’t been upset that I was late the way I’d been expecting, because at least a quarter of the town was here to help her set up this pageant. To me, that meant she’d overreacted on the phone, because I hadn’t really needed me to be here to help at all. I missed out on an extra vacation day over nothing, but that wasn’t the thing that really irked me.

It’s how she spoke to anyone who wasn’t her friend or an adult. She was all smiles to keep up public appearances with adults, like the suck up she was, but there’d been a number of other kids from the high school here yesterday too, and I might be mean or rude to people, but she was demanding and talked down to them. To make her stop, I’d snatched her clipboard from her and told her to leave them to me. I may not like being around very many people at once, but if I only had to see them in groups of twos or threes or fours, I could manage, and all of the tasks on her list were completed according to the spec I’d been given. Crisis diverted, and we didn’t have a bunch of traumatized high school students on our hands, just some mildly insulted ones, because again, I wasn’t particularly nice, but at least I was funny about it and like 90% of them had laughed at what I said, just not the dicks I’d put in their place.

Now, it would appear she was starting in on the waiting staff, and no . . . just no. My human Mom had been wait staff for most of my life, so I knew they were just people with jobs to do and should be treated better than that. It was one thing for me to silently cheer for the blonde waitress last year to do what Damon ultimately compelled her to do, which was spill drinks on one of the important people here, because the people here were all self-important, deserved it, and she'd needed to find a different job doing anything but subjugating herself for these people at their ridiculous functions, something she must've done, because I saw her working in the stationary shop in town, and she'd looked much happier. It was another thing entirely to treat the wait staff like dirt, which again was why I’d wanted that girl to spill her drinks on an important person here, because self-important people were jerks to people they considered subordinates and needed to be knocked down a peg or two. Werewolf gene or not, the Mayor certainly proved himself to be one of those types with how he’d gone off on her, and Caroline was being one now too.

I may have wanted to go somewhere else to get away from her, but I saw her stalking in the other direction, and I could tell by her posture that it was to bring more of her tyranny down on unsuspecting people, so walking up behind her, I asked, “What did we talk about yesterday?”

She froze, and her shoulders fell. Slowly turning to look back at me, she said, “But – “ as she pointed her thumb in the direction of the four-string quartet.

“I don’t care. Yesterday, the people here were giving you their time for free. Today, they’re just here to get paid, because they need the money, and I know you wouldn’t like it if someone acted this way to Matt. If you can’t talk to them the right way because of the stress, come find me, and I will do it for you, or I will put you on ice for the remainder of the day. Now, what do you want me to say to the quartet?”

With a pout, she answered, “Tell them to play something more upbeat.”

I went to go do that and then froze myself when I heard a voice behind me say, “I know her bark can sometimes be as bad as her bite, but I wouldn’t take it personally. She means well.”

I guess it was a case of small fish, bigger fish, and biggest fish. I scowled and considered throwing that glower in Klaus’s direction but decided that not acknowledging him was the better play. At least it would ensure that Caroline would get the Klaus who was full of manners and all keen to show her his softer side. Blech. After catching the look from her that said not to leave her alone with him, my scowl morphed into more of an expression that said, ‘Huh uh, no way. I’m not being your third wheel with him,’ and then I carried on my way.

If she didn’t want to go on a date with him, then she shouldn’t have let herself be conned into one to save Elena from the hunter’s curse . . . Like Klaus really cared about losing one of those vampires. I mean he’d let me kill one of his associates just to see what kind of weapon I should have when I started training. He wanted to destroy the cure a whole lot more than he wanted to train me, which meant he would’ve provided a vampire to them for free, but Caroline’s the one who’d asked, and he’d exploited the situation to his own benefit, because that’s what she was trying to do by exploiting the affections he had for her. Now, Tyler was somewhere around here pissed off about it, and he had every right to be.

When I got to the quartet, I interrupted their playing. “Hey . . . We have a request for you guys to play the Beatles . . . Guessing you know some of their songs, so would you mind playing those until this thing kicks off?” They shared a look, nodded, like they were of the same mind, and then started playing _All You Need Is Love_ , so I guess they were at least used to playing that at weddings.

Job complete. I turned to leave and stopped when someone approached me from the side. “Hey . . . Eve?”

“Hey, Matt . . . everything all right?”

There was something about his tone that said it wasn’t. “Yeah, I, um . . . have you seen Elena?”

“No, but she’s probably around here mingling somewhere.”

If that’s all Matt wanted, I would’ve left it at that, but I could tell it wasn’t, so I waited about 5 awkward seconds for him to say it. No? Nothing. Well then, I’m sure I’d find out about it later. That professor guy was here as a judge, and I wanted to go deal with that. “You haven’t seen Jer either, have you?”

Again, I stopped. “No. What’s got you worried?”

Stepping closer, he looked around us, like he was making sure we couldn’t be heard before leaning in as he quietly said, “I told him he needed to talk to one of you . . . about what’s been goin’ on with him lately. Has he?”

No, the apparent liar told me things were fine. “Nope, so why don’t you do it?”

“He, uh . . . he’s been having nightmares about killing Elena.”

Jeremy could just be worried about killing her now that he was a hunter, or it could actually be something, like his hunter side getting him used to the idea of killing her. “Anything else?”

“Well, he’s gotten really strong all of a sudden. I couldn’t lift one keg by myself yesterday, and he picked up two, like they were nothing.”

“He’s supernatural now, so it kind of comes with the terrain. What’s the real problem?”

“Dreaming about killing his sister isn’t enough?” It was, and it wasn’t. When I didn’t respond, he sighed and finally said, “When he woke up this morning he’d carved stakes in his sleep. They all had that hunter’s symbol carved into them, and I was looking over the research that Professor gave Bonnie. It said newly awakened hunters may not be fully conscious of what they’re doing. Their subconscious pushes through until it becomes their basic instinct.”

“Okay, that is a problem.” Matt took a step back, like he was relieved I thought so too. “He was a potential hunter, because his subconscious is already primed to hate vampires. He wanted them out of his and his sister’s life, and now sister is one . . . the hunter’s mark sounds like it’s not going to let him see her as his sister anymore.” I briefly growled in frustration. “Ugh, he should’ve told me. I’ll find him. We might have to reconsider his living arrangements, and he definitely shouldn’t be killing anymore vampires right now . . . Thanks for telling me. If you see Elena, she should know too.”

I left in search of Jeremy but didn’t make it far before I was approached again. This time it was by Tyler and some girl I didn’t know. “Hey, Eve.” I glanced over my shoulder to see what really had his attention. Caroline and Klaus, and neither of them looked like they were having a bad time. Shit. I glanced back at him and then at the girl again before going back to him. “Tyler . . . playing games, I see.”

Tearing his eyes away from his girlfriend, he looked at me in surprise and quickly shook his head. “What? No. I – this is Hayley. She’s just a friend.”

Resting her hand casually on Tyler’s shoulder, she extended the other as she said, “When I saw how you handled the situation with pageant-zilla, I told Ty I had to meet you.”

I flicked a look down at her hand and ignored it. Tyler didn’t have friends who weren’t from this town, and with that accent, she wasn’t. “So werewolf then . . . normal run of the mill one . . . didn’t meet him when he was with Jules, so it was probably when he was trying to break his sire bond.”

Dropping her hand, she feigned innocence. “Well, he needed help from someone. He doesn’t exactly have a pack to show him the ropes.”

I shot a look at Tyler, like ‘come on,’ and his eyes opened a little wider, “What?”

Loyal, protective, possibly even a good leader given how he’d been the night Alec died and the way he was with the football team, a bit ill-tempered at times, and a good artist from what I’d heard. Those were words that could be used to describe Tyler, but sharpest tool in the shed wasn’t on that list. Either he didn’t tell her that I’d killed the chance he had at Mason’s pack or even the one he could’ve had with the hybrids, someone else had done it, and that's why he didn't notice it, because he had no reason to suspect she knew, or he did say something to her about why he was out there trying to turn without a pack and just didn’t pick up on her calling me out on it now, but it was one of those, because she was definitely being catty for a wolf. He and I were gonna have a talk about this later when she wasn’t around. My eyes flicked back to her. “Well, that’s where you’re wrong. His pack is a little unconventional, but he does have one.”

She mocked what she thought was my stupidity. “Are you including yourself in that, because there’s no way that you could possibly ever understand - ”

“Oh, I’m not in his pack . . . I’m really more of a lone-wolf type.” My eyes narrowed. “Just like you.” Her mouth opened and I said, “Let me guess. You bounce around from pack to pack when you’re lucky enough to find one, never really settle . . . that’s how you met him and were able to devote all your time to him one-on-one, and you're not here now to be his faux-date to a small town pageant, although that is why he brought you. I’d say he’s a little young for you. You seem like you’d be into older guys to me.”

She smirked. If the gloves were off in a civil setting, then she didn’t have to pull her punches anymore either, and that’s what she really wanted. “Are you saying I have daddy issues?”

“I could’ve been asking what you’re really doing here, but if that’s where you want to take it, then sure. Let’s go with that. So was it just your Dad or both parents that abandoned you?”

I’d over-stepped the mark in a big way, and the good-humored banter she’d thought she was having with someone she’d come over here to compete with - for reasons only known to her - turned in an instant into something else entirely. She wasn’t able to mask her expression falling before she looked away from me. Briefly touching her nose, she cleared her throat and then asked, “Why would you think that,” as she tried to dig herself out of it.

“Werewolves shouldn’t be lone-wolves. It goes against your very nature to be one, and if you are one, then I think it’s because life has you running purely on survival mode, something you’ve been doing for a long time, and given that you’re not that much older than me, that tells me your family is gone.”

“Eve!” I glanced at Tyler after his hushed outburst, and he said, “I know you have a hard time meeting new people, but can you just maybe . . . put it on hold this once? She’s my friend.”

“I’d be careful calling her a friend if I was you. If she’s a survivor, then she doesn’t know how to reciprocate loyalty, because she has to put herself first.”

Rolling his eyes, he said, “I get that you’re looking out for me, and I appreciate it, but I don’t need your help on this.” Turning me partially away from her, so he could whisper in my ear without her hearing, he added, “Look, she’s just as uncomfortable being here as you are, and I brought her over here, because I thought you might be the one person who could make her feel not so out of place since you know what it’s like to be new in town.”

I retorted with a hushed, “I’m willing to bet that I’ve done more to make her feel at ease in all this pomp and circumstance than you are in defending her right now despite your best intentions.” She'd probably still heard that, but I cast a look at her, and I’d say I was right in what I'd said. She didn’t need anyone defending her. She could do it herself, and she was a fighter, so in some ways I’d made her feel right at home . . . well as at home as living out of a suitcase could make her feel. It was going to suck when I had to kill her, but I’d liked Mason too. I’d kill her just as easily when the time came and live with the consequences after it was done. I was getting similar vibes from her. She liked me, but she’d kill me in a heartbeat. I wondered who’d make the first move.

Despite adding her to a growing list of concerns, I was actually making him uncomfortable, and I did like Tyler, so I decided to give him a break. Turning out of our huddle, I focused on Hayley. “Don’t let the pretty dress or the surroundings fool you. I am a walking bundle of issues too, aren’t I, _Ty?_ I mocked her nickname for him to break the tension and send it back into the friendlier banter-zone that Tyler hadn’t minded so much. 

Looking at Tyler, as I went to take a step around them, I flicked a hand in Caroline’s direction and added, “I don’t know what that is, but I do know she loves you, and if you hurt her by playing games, then for every tear she sheds, I will break a bone in your body for having to deal with it, and I’m willing to bet she cries a lot, so you might as well just turn to get it over with . . . It’d be safer for you anyway. I like the wolf you. He’s lovely even if he’s a little slobbery.”

He gritted, “I thought we weren’t going to talk about that,” through his teeth, like I was embarrassing him in front of a fellow wolf, and I smiled before pulling it back for him.

“Are you saying you don’t drool when you’re all snarly?” He relaxed before shooting a look at Hayley to see if she bought that, and as I passed by her shoulder, my attention shifted to her, “Nice meeting you, Hayley. I’m sure we’ll see each other again.” _And welcome to the Lonely Club for now._


	30. The Monster Under My Bed

I’d developed a strategy to get through today. I decided to take Damon’s metaphor of using how he felt about me as an almost literal daylight ring and added how I felt about him into it. I was pretty sure those feelings were how I’d managed to stay outside at the lake house without an umbrella during the day, but even without the stress of being in Mystic Falls, there’d been a time limit on it, so in Mystic Falls, I had to be more careful. When the sun got to be too much, I’d find some shade or head into the house, but I wouldn’t go in search of Damon. I wanted to get by with him at a distance. If I didn’t start figuring out how do that, then this would start heading into needy territory, and that wasn’t me at all.

Overall, I did well with my new strategy, so much so that I’d felt comfortable testing out other strategies for how I could use this curse of mine. If focusing on how I felt about Damon helped dampen the strength of the curse, then focusing on how isolated I felt in the crowd without allowing myself to get annoyed or angry about anything, should just make me colder, and people didn’t like standing in cold spots. It might require me heading into the house more often to recharge, but I was quite pleased with the three-foot radius I’d created around me, because it drastically reduced the possibility that I’d be touched by anyone, and with a strapless, sleeveless dress, I needed as much of a buffer between other people and me as possible.

Watching the crowning ceremony, I thought about where I’d been this time last year. I’d spent most of the day up in a tree. The core of who I was may not have changed, but there had been tiny changes around the periphery of who I was, or I wouldn’t be here right now, which I think meant that I’d grown as a person . . . just not a lot. I still didn’t know why any of this mattered. All these people spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on dresses and tuxes, Caroline had stressed about it, and I had to come back from my vacation for it, but it was absolutely pointless. Truth be told, I found it a little horrifying that I’d been a part of it.

Looking down at my dress, I shook my head at the wasted spending. Okay, so it was pretty, but I didn't think I was supposed to wear it again any time soon, and it's not like I could wear it anywhere that wasn't formal, which meant that it'd only been bought for one day, and if that was the case, then the only good thing about it on the day was that it the only dress here that was sea foam green. Everything else seemed to be blue, white, black, or gold. I sighed as everyone started clapping. I guess that orphan girl from the church was wearing red, a color that was way too bold for me, and she looked happy to be crowned, but I still shook my head, because if this was the best she got out of life after everything that’d happened to her, then she was in trouble. 

Elena was part of the court, and something caught her attention in the crowd. I followed where she was looking. Jeremy. I’d given up on him coming here today.

He turned to leave, and I went to follow him. I made it about 15 steps before I felt a wobble. Oh no. I should’ve found some shade to recharge again by now, but it would appear that I’d gotten a little carried away with my latest experiment. Inhale. _I love Damon._ Take a step. Exhale. _He loves me_ Take a step. “Shit.” My knee buckled, but I never actually hit the ground. Instead, I was scooped up, and apparently there was nothing to see here, I’d just had one too many and people needed to clear a path. Looking at Klaus as he carried me away from the masses, I grumbled, “What are you doing?”

“We wouldn’t want anyone touching you if you collapse, now would we?”

He had a point. The automatic impulse of some people would’ve been to help get me back on my feet no matter how cold the air around me was. “I’m okay.”

He tossed me a smug look that said he knew I agreed with him but was feeling gracious enough not to say it more openly. That date of his must be going as well as I’d thought. “I hear you’re supposed to have an umbrella these days. Where is it?”

“I left it at home.”

“Why?”

“I had a plan.”

“And by all accounts, it seems to have failed, so why are you still here?”

“I’ll have you know that my plan did work. I just got caught up in conducting another experiment, and – “ I pointed in the direction Jeremy had gone, but stopped myself from saying his name, because I didn’t want to bring him up in front of Klaus. Jeremy was supposed to be Pastor Young’s daughter’s date, but he’d ditched her, or I would’ve talked to him after that stupid dance he was supposed to do. He could be very unreliable, so I wasn’t overly surprised that he hadn’t made it, but now he’d shown up wearing a suit, which meant he took the time to put one on even though this thing was almost over. In the few seconds that I’d seen him, he hadn’t looked like he was hanging around to congratulate his supposed date when she got off the stage, and if he wasn’t trying to make up for his failure to show when she needed him, then why was he here? I needed to see him, judge for myself if he was in trouble the way Matt thought, and find a way to resolve it before anyone got hurt. “ – well, it would appear that now I have a mission I didn’t foresee happening until later.”

The corners of his mouth curled up in a slight smirk. “It is not a mission I see you completing at present . . . And what have we learned from this?”

I turned my attention from Elena’s back, as she made her way through the crowd in the direction that Jeremy had gone, to the jerk carrying me. “That the Boy Scouts are right about being prepared?” His smirk gave way to a genuine chuckle. “Where are you taking me?” I wasn’t ready to go home yet.

“Out of the sun.”

I looked ahead, and it would appear Tyler’s house was getting closer. That would have to do for now. At least I was still somewhere near the action. I looked back at Klaus and decided to address the problem closest to me. “How’s your date going?”

“It’s been . . . “ He smiled to himself before his eyes flicked over to me. “Better than all expectations.”

“Mm. Can’t disagree with you there. Certainly seemed to be going better than I would’ve thought any time I saw you two . . . Isn’t it wrong though?”

“In what way?”

He headed through the entryway, and I said, “She’s with someone else. Shouldn’t you respect that?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard that ‘All is fair in love and war.’”

“I have, and in war sure, but . . . “ If Caroline liked Klaus more than she wanted to admit, then she should be honest with Tyler and stop stringing him along, or it was her ass I was going to kick. “Shouldn’t she at least be honest with Tyler?”

Klaus brought me into a quiet room. I saw empty glasses in a few places, so even though it was remote, this place wasn’t off limits to party-goers. They all must’ve left to watch that ridiculous ceremony. They’d probably stay out there drinking for a while too, so for now it looked like I was alone with him. I went back to waiting for my response and caught him finding amusement in my surveillance of the room. Heading for the couch, he answered, “She’s not ready yet, and I am willing to wait.”

As he put me down, I replied, “But let me guess. You’re not above playing dirty to speed that along a bit.” His answer was a grin, and he left me to go pull the curtains behind the couch closed. So, completely out of the sun then? It would appear he knew quite a bit about my affliction. “Well, if it works, then I don’t want to hear another lecture from her about Damon again.”

Coming back around the couch to sit next to me, Klaus said, “Ah, yes . . . I heard about your little predicament. How is that sire bond of your sister’s going?”

“Happily ignored until now, thanks.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to break it.”

Resting my head against the back of the couch I said, “There’s a book I need to find. I know there’s something in there about it. I just need to go get it.”

His eyebrow quirked up as he slyly suggested, “The more obvious solution to me would be that if she had the cure, it would solve your problem.”

“Let’s not pretend you actually want her to have it.” His good mood started to fall, and I said, “Oh, come on, Klaus. I’ll admit you had me at first, but there’s a good chance she won’t be creating any new hybrids if she has a _cure_ for vampirism in her blood that simply cures any werewolf you try to turn, and you don’t think turning me is going to make me want to find it so I can use it on myself along with her. You think I’d destroy it out of spite.”

“Then, I suppose you know why – “

“You don’t want anyone to use it on you, and I get it. Self-preservation above all else . . . I’m a little surprised you haven’t asked for that white oak stake back if I’m being honest.”

Relaxing somewhat as his elbows rested on his knees, he looked to the doorway and said, “Now that you mention it.”

“Didn’t exactly keep it safe the last time I gave it to you.”

Ignoring that, he added, “And I’ll take whatever it is you used to kill that Original hunter too.”

“Who says it wasn’t Elena drowning?”

“I was there. ‘Oh, that was checkmate. You just don’t know it yet,’ seems to ring a bell.” When he glanced at me, he added, “You should’ve told me you had it.”

“You already knew about it. It was in my anti-magic bag, so you can thank Kol for the recipe.”

Realizing what I meant, he gave me a side-glance as he snipped, “Don’t sell yourself short. I know it was meant to be a protection, and you found a way to weaponize it.”

“I just concentrated it down . . . a lot.”

Still watching the door, he shook his head, and I knew he was torn on what to do. That probably wasn’t very good for me, and the next words out of his mouth seemed to back that up. “I think I’m beginning to understand why it is you find being around me stressful with all the _lies_ you keep – “

“Lies? Not you too.” He briefly glanced at me, and I said, “Secrets are not lies Why does everyone around here think they are . . . and you’re one to talk. ‘I promise this trip will be much different than the last one’ . . . You failed to mention it’d be because I’d be a vampire this time.”

My eyebrow arched in defiance, and he went from being frustrated to letting his shoulders fall as he shook his head at the door again. “Why do you test me this way?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Finally, looking at me, he harshly explained, “I mean that since we met, you have consistently found ways to incapacitate and/or kill me. There was the white oak ash theory of yours that you tested on my sister in front of me. Then you shot me in the heart with it, killed my father, and wiped out all my bloody hybrids. After that, you went and got an indestructible white oak stake made that you had no intention of using, and I don't think that's all you have. You had days if not weeks after deciphering those glyphs in the cave to find the white oak before anyone else. You like guns, so it makes sense to me that you would have also made white oak bullets that you have hidden somewhere too, but it’s just to have them, because I think you like having something over me . . . You attacked me in my own home. You’ve taken something my brother lost interest in 5 seconds after he wrote it down 500 years ago and turned it into something else that can probably kill me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you find a way to get that cure, so you can horde it too. Are you trying to make me kill you?”

“No.”

“Then what are you hoping to achieve?!”

“I don’t know.” His expression went blank. It wasn't a murderous look, but he sure didn’t like that answer. “I think a better question would be, ‘Why haven’t you killed me yet?’ You really should have by now.” Still nothing. Pulling my legs onto the couch and curling them under me as I faced him more, the side of my face turned into the back of the couch, and I considered what kind of a peace offering I should give him.

“I had an imaginary sister my whole life, but she’s not the only one who came with us everywhere we went . . . Once upon a time, there was a princess with no name.” I paused, and there wasn’t much in the way of a response, but he blinked, so I was taking that as a good sign. “Her story’s changed a lot over the last year, but for a long time it stayed the same, and I grew up hearing it whenever I went to my Dad’s. I had a name by the time I was two, so it must’ve started before that, but the princess with no name stuck, and in the story, she was a huntress of the ages . . . Her greatest adversary was Klaus . . . a Klaus who was more like your father than you, so in a recent rewrite, she got her king from the kingdom that was always at war with hers, but in the original story, she never did.”

His face had lost its stoic expression by then. “And why was that?”

“Oh he killed her . . . every time.”

“What’s a fairy tale for a little girl without a happy ending?”

See, even he got it. “A Grimm one.” He bit back a smirk at my pun, and I said, “There was a happy ending for the world, just not the princess . . . and Klaus became the monster in my closet or under my bed in every place I lived, but if I ever feared monsters, I don’t remember it, and whenever I was alone, which was a lot, my invisible Klaus and I had exquisite battles. I mean, they were epic.” He lost a little more of his fight against that smile, and I added, “Then, of course, there were her weapons. Getting one of her daggers was surreal, because I wasn’t even sure that they were real, but it was mine from the first moment I held it in my hand, and when I saw the whole set at your house, I just couldn’t resist, because she had them all . . . She was a lot to live up to.”

“I’m sure you’ve surpassed her by now.”

“There was a moment in Hell when I felt like her, but I’m not a huntress of the ages yet.”

His eyebrows rose as he exhaled a laugh and then bowed his head. “So, victory over your childhood adversary is your motivation.“

“On some level.”

When he looked up at me, he said, “And your imagined battles were to right the wrongs of the story.”

“Well, he never killed me in our battles, so I suppose that’s true, but I never killed him either, because as far as I knew, he couldn’t be killed.”

“It was a never ending battle of wits.” I nodded. “That’s why you expected more of me when we met.”

He hung his head, and it might’ve just been because he was absorbing that, but with him, you had to assume that it was because he was calculating how ingrained a problem this was and if it was worth keeping you alive. “You were being superficial, so yeah, I did expect more from you than that, but after you stopped trying to be a show off, I’d be lying if I said I don’t think that what I got instead was much better.” He glanced at me, and I tried to explain. “If your father was the monster from my story come to life, then he was way too easy. You’re more like the imaginary Klaus I battled against, except I don’t control all the outcomes.”

There was a flicker of emotion that said that meant something to him and those moments were as rewarding as they were perilous, so I gave him space to respond. “There were two versions. Your mortal enemy in a story you didn’t think could be changed and the closest thing you had to a playmate . . . How is it that I resemble an imaginary figure piloted entirely by you?”

“Aside from how you act like a child sometimes?”

There was a hint of humor to his voice as he retorted, “You are entirely too cheeky for your own good.”

I felt myself relax somewhat with a laugh of my own. “Thank you for saying it’s not because I’m too smart.”

“Your intellect is your most valuable weapon. Anyone who says otherwise is nothing but a fool . . . and you know what I meant, so tell me.”

”The first answer that comes to mind is . . . there’s no real way to beat yourself in a battle of wits, because no matter how many steps ahead you think, your opponent will match you. It’s similar with you. Not only do you and I think about strategy in a similar way, but however many steps ahead you think on something, I have to match you, go a step further, and expect you to have already thought of 2 more steps in the meantime, so I think of 3 more, and so on and so forth. What makes it different is that with a heart that feels hurts as deeply as yours does and after 1000 years of abuses, you are far from predictable. To account for it, I have to understand why you do the things you do and try to head you off before you take it to that next level, because I don’t think there’s any way of stopping you when you reach it . . . especially when not even you know what you’re going to do when it happens.”

He’d bowed his head again along the way. I’d taken his question at surface level. Maybe I owed him a little more than that. “But if what you were really asking is if I think we’re the same . . . Being a hybrid allows you to blame what you are for why you feel the way you do about your place in the world when I’d venture to say that it’s really because of the way the harsh realities of your life have had an impact on you, starting with your parents. I don’t have that luxury. I simply am what I am, and no label is really adequate, although, I try to find one sometimes, and it just sounds ridiculous to most people.”

When his eyes flicked back up to me, I realized I may have been wrong in my assessment. What I’d said first had been more than enough, and now I’d accidentally hit him with a double dose of whatever feeling he'd had that’d made him break eye contact. Not good.

“It would be a mistake to try and manipulate – “

“You asked, and I answered with the truth. What I didn’t do was say that you should trust me. I don’t trust you beyond a certain point either. I use my journey through Hell as a measuring stick to determine how much trust I have in someone, and there’s certainly no way I’d go through Hell with you at my side and expect to make it out unless it was through my own efforts, and I think it’d probably be the same for you with me.” That seemed to quench his immediate need to react negatively to what I’d said, and before it came back, I took a deep breath and added, “Anyway, I’m ruining your date. You should go.”

He looked at the door, and his muscles tensed, like he was going to stand, but he halted before looking back at me, like he thought I’d almost beaten him again. “I’m still going to need that white oak stake back.”

“Seriously, look at what happened the last time you had it.” In fairness to him, I’d briefly lost the stake too when I died, but I’d found it again when I went in search of Damon’s top shelf bourbon. There was absolutely no reason for Klaus to know that.

“I don’t seem to remember you telling me that it wouldn’t work on him.”

“What am I, stupid? Of course I didn’t tell you what would kill him.”

He exhaled another laugh but refused to be side-tracked. “And I’m going to need your weapons grade anti-magic potion too.”

“Or, I could use that to get rid of the ornamental trophy that I earned for killing Mikael.” That put him on the spot for some reason. “You’d rather just have the stake back, wouldn’t you? I don’t think you intend to ever use it on your siblings, but there’s probably power in holding the only thing that can kill you in your hand . . . and you never know. In 2000, 10000, 100000 years, after humans have killed themselves off or the sun is expanding towards the earth, it may just be your only way out.”

Ducking his head again, he admitted, “I’ll get it back from you at your dinner party.”

“Fine. But you can’t confiscate my anti-magic serum. You may be the apex predator on the planet, but I don’t think you’re the most dangerous thing out there. Magic and some of the people who wield it are. That’s why I made it. It’s why I need to keep it, and it’s why I will probably continue making more and search for other weapons I can use against them.”

Looking at what I presume was the pallor of my skin, he asked, “If it’s so useful, then why haven’t you used it on yourself?” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Magic brought you back with your ring, and it might undo that.” Still, I said nothing, and his eyes narrowed at the challenge. “But magic is also what killed you, so it might be a loophole . . . still too large of a risk to take for something you think you can manage.” Yeah, that seemed to be the crux of it. I shrugged a shoulder, and he cautiously said, “What if I said that what you call a curse was never intended to be used on a living thing, and your human form won’t survive it indefinitely?”

“I’d say that I did quite well when I was away on respite, so it depends on what this human form of mine is doing, but . . . you want me to think that is at least part of the reason why you came up with this scheme of yours to turn me.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up, and he countered, “There is more than one reason for doing something.”

I corrected him. “Attempting to do something.” After a brief pause, I admitted, “And I know there is. I’m always saying that . . . You have no idea how to get rid of this, do you?”

I got about half a head shake out of him. “Not without it killing you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m not, and Imelda’s out there somewhere working on it, so I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“No more experiments in the meantime.”

My eyebrows arched at his parental tone, and he smiled as he looked back towards the door. “You could’ve asked me, you know.” When his attention came back to me, I said, “If this cure is a threat to you, you could’ve asked me to get rid of it . . . I am supposed to protect you now.”

That made him laugh. “My very own guardian angel.”

“Yeah, well, a guy like you has probably earned a weak-ass guardian angel, like me.”

“A guy like me doesn’t deserve a guardian angel like you at all . . . just stay out of it unless you’re training that cousin of yours to kill vampires, because it wouldn’t be like you not to help him with that, and keep my intentions to yourself. The others can continue doing the heavy lifting . . . and give me some of your anti-magic stock. It would make us even if I knew I had something that could be used against you to your possible detriment.”

That couldn’t mean what I thought it did, could it? Was he trying to curb his paranoid monstrous side by feeding it something mundane? I mean he could kill me right now if he wanted without that stuff. “Are you trying to protect me from you?” His response was a look that said he was, and he found it touching that I would think him capable of that, but he wasn’t going to say it. Instead he got to his feet saying he’d left Caroline for too long, but I stopped him by asking, “Why?”

“Is that I think the world is better with you in it not enough?” He turned to look down at me and continued, “No, I suppose that’s too much of a platitude for you, though no less true.”

“Somehow, I don’t think me being a vampire fits in with that.”

Sitting back down next to me, he said, “How is it that you know about that anyway? I know you didn’t go to my house.”

“I was stopped on my way to kill the hunter by someone who wants that cure as much as you do.”

His brow smoothed in realization. “Stefan.”

“Mm.”

“He warned you – “

“No, he tried to turn me.”

He sat against the back of the couch and looked down at me over his shoulder. “I can’t help but notice that you’re still very human.”

“Yeah, well it’s not for his lack of trying . . . just sloppiness. He knows not to fight me one-on-one for even as long as it takes to try and snap my neck, and he was in a hurry to get to the hunter before the others, so he didn’t make sure that he finished the job.” Of course I wasn’t going to say that to Damon, because he already knew it, but if I admitted it, then it’d somehow make it feel more real to him than it already did, and neither one of us needed the consequences of that.

“He left you to suffer?”

“I wouldn’t call it suffering.”

“Then what would you call it?”

“Being brain dead.”

“Damon found you?”

“And literally drowned me in his blood. I was coughing it out of my lungs until it got absorbed when I woke up.”

“That was never my intention.”

“Yeah, a botched execution doesn’t really sound like your style.”

“I’m serious.” His expression seemed to indicate that he was. “You should’ve been afforded more dignity than that.”

“Is there such a thing as dignity in death?”

“There can be, and you know it . . . It’s why you were willing to die to kill Katerina when Caroline met you or to take Bonnie’s powers to teach her a lesson . . . to save the souls that talisman imprisoned . . . You believe that you will go down fighting and most likely for something greater than yourself. That’s why you’ll never see old age as preferable to any other scenario, including being a vampire . . . I would’ve honored that. Maybe you’d still be sitting here as a human . . . a very angry human set on doing the thing I needed you to do, but even if you weren’t a human, it would’ve been because I gave you the respect you deserve by pitting you against difficult odds that would be impossible by anyone else’s standards.”

He might’ve just expressed why I’d felt so mortified by the entire situation in a better way than I could, and he also seemed to have given me another way he’d justified the idea of turning me – that I wouldn’t want to grow old and feeble before dying a meaningless death. Insight like that into a mind like his was always useful, and it might mean he hadn’t been fully committed to it - just enough to piss me off and send me in search of that cure - except he’d also planted the seed of what he was planning in Stefan’s mind. Maybe he hadn’t thought Stefan would do it or that Stefan would find another way to steer me in the right direction, or maybe Stefan had done what he’d wanted him to do, just not in a way he would’ve wanted it done.

That was the problem with Klaus. He could do very bad things, but when he felt bad about them after the fact, which he clearly did now, it was hard to know what was true and what he wished was true. “He won fair and square. I’m the idiot who looked down and wasted time being worried about what he’d injected me with.”

“I assume you mean he injected you with his blood?” I nodded, and he said, “It’s not what vampires typically do when dealing with a human, is it?”

It looked like he and Damon were in agreement on that. “No, but it was smart. I’ll be ready the next time though.”

“You weren’t in Chicago either.” Yeah, he was there for that one. I didn’t want to get into how much of a weakness it was for me, but I also didn’t have a ready response for it. “We’ll work on it.”

Wasn’t expecting that. “I don’t really feel like having random people jump out at me with needles everywhere I go.”

Looking out at an invisible crowd, he said, “Anyone can be a threat to you in the simplest of ways.” Glancing back at me, he said, “We’ll work on it . . . and how is your training going?”

“Better without a blindfold even if we still have to do it at night . . . I have taken quite a few nights off though.”

He smirked at the mention of the blindfold. “No more nights off until I get a satisfactory report back from him.”

“You’re getting progress reports on me?!”

Sitting up, he said, “Not yet, but it’s the first thing I’m doing after my date is over . . . And now I really have left Caroline for too long.” Getting to his feet he paused. “You said once that reveling in victory over an adversary is what fun is . . . I knew what you meant, but I didn’t understand what it meant to you until you fought The Ripper of Monterrey in all his glory and immediately went on to your next battle . . . Is it as satisfying as it seems . . . working as hard as you do to survive every day and succeeding in that?”

When he looked back at me for the answer, I briefly smiled, “Probably more. I just don’t typically broadcast it.”

“Unless you’re up to something, like trying to mitigate the disaster with my hybrids.” I gave him a more genuine smile in response. “I was reminded of something in a conversation I had earlier, and I haven’t thought of it in a very long time, but almost as soon as I said it, I realized it was no longer true.” Watching me, he said, “You’ve become an ever-present hummingbird in my life . . . That is one of the reasons I have no desire to see you dead and gone forever, and it’s the last one you’re getting.”

Was it because when he admitted things like that out loud, it’d make it harder for him to kill me? Pretty sure it was. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I'll be sure to ask Caroline, because she's the only one you've talked to today, and you can’t start calling me Hummingbird. Nobody would take me seriously as a hunter if you did that.”

With a grin, he said, “No? And what would you prefer?”

“Your Highness.”

He snorted. “Not having a name does add to the mystery, and it does keep you safe, but - ” His eyes narrowed in thought. “- to get the kind of recognition that would allow you to achieve the status of a huntress of the ages, the credit should go somewhere. If you want to strike fear into the hearts of those you hunt and have it mean anything, just use Eve.”

So, don’t hide behind a pseudonym. “Like you use Klaus?”

“People have a tendency to add their own descriptors . . . Klaus the Mad. Klaus the Bloodthirsty. It’ll be the same for you . . . Now, I really must go, and I’m still awaiting that invitation.”

“We haven’t sent them out yet.”

“Then if I don’t see you before it, I will see you on the night.”


	31. Sister Roommates

I was aware that we were not alone, but I still denied Elena entry. Blocking the front doorway with my arm, I shook my head. “I’m not sure it’s appropriate.”

“Why not?”

She couldn’t seriously be this dense. “Elena, you just broke up with Stefan, and now you want to live in his house. I’m not sure I could give more of a textbook example of inappropriateness then that.”

I heard a voice behind me say, “It’s fine. I’ll go stay somewhere else tonight,” and shook my head at the absurdity of it. Why did everyone always give her everything she wanted?

Still ignoring Stefan for the most part, I communicated with him the way I had been if I communicated with him at all – simple hand gestures. Lifting my hand above my shoulder with a rather dismissive signal meant to tell him to shut up and not get involved, I kept my attention on Elena and said, “There are three other houses with vampires in town. Two of them belong to people who have been friends with you for years, and one of those belongs to one of your best friends. Why can’t you stay with Caroline?”

“You’re here.”

“And?”

“And we’re family.”

“Which only works, because we have never ever lived together.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake.” Grabbing me by the upper arm and tugging me out of the way, Alice said, “Come in, Elena, and Stefan doesn’t have to go anywhere either. She can take the room next to mine, and they never have to see each other.”

I watched her usher Elena past me and said, “Wait, is that the room next to mine too, or the one on the other side of yours.”

Shutting the door, Alice turned to face me. “She was almost killed by her brother today. Does it matter?”

I had no problem supporting Elena after what she’d been through today. It wasn’t that she’d been attacked. It was who had done it, and I could understand how that would be upsetting. I mean she had to feel pretty similar to how Jeremy probably felt after she killed him last week. Their living situation had become untenable. One of them had to leave, and it should be her.

If she’d had her way at the bottom of the river the night Matt’s truck went off the bridge, then Jeremy would’ve been alone in that house anyway. At least now, she was able to ask Matt to stay with him for a while, and supernatural hunter or not, Jeremy was still just a kid who needed the kind of stability that someone like Matt could provide. He’d also given up everything to save Elena from that Hunter's curse, and she had more of a safety net of people who would support her. I just didn’t understand why Elena wouldn’t go to Bonnie or Caroline instead of coming here.

It couldn’t be just because I was here. Maybe that was part of it, and maybe she felt safer here, but I had a strong inkling that it was because Damon was here too. That actually made this the last place she should go. Damon had been fine since we’d been back as long as Stefan wasn’t around, but the second Stefan walked into the room, that changed, and I didn’t want him forcing Elena to do anything, like make a fool of herself, which would be much easier for him to do on a whim if she was here all the time. I issued a drawn out, “Weeell . . . “ and putting her hands on her hips, Alice’s eyebrow quirked up, like I’d better reconsider what I was about to say. I fought hard not to laugh at her.

“What’s so funny?”

“You . . . acting like the voice of maturity and reason.“

“Stop being a brat, and I wouldn’t have to act any way.”

“Okay, fine, but I told you earlier why it might not be a good idea.”

She glanced at Damon before looking back at me. “You leave that to me. Now go show your sister to her room.” Watching Stefan, like a hawk as I passed him, she waited until I’d taken Elena around the corner to say whatever it was she had to say to them, and I was sure that whatever it was, it’d be good, so I stopped around the corner to eavesdrop.

She hadn’t gone to the pageant today, because she hadn’t wanted to run into Klaus, so I was filling her in on how it'd gone when Elena called to ask if she could come over to talk. When I’d gotten off the phone, I told Alice that I was going to go outside to meet Elena, since the brothers were here, and she’d wanted to know why them being here was a problem if Elena came over, so I might have told her about Elena being sired to Damon, which meant that I’d also been the one to fill her in on why Damon might feel the need to retaliate against Stefan using Elena. Since it was all news to her, Alice wasn’t happy with Stefan in any way, shape, or form. She was almost as indignant about it as Damon was right after it happened, but she didn’t want Elena to be hurt either. It would seem that she had decided that things had gotten out of control around here and was stepping into the role of the house’s ‘big sister’ who was going to put us all in our place. I wanted front row seats for that.

Elena stopped to watch me. “What are you doing?”

I quickly brought my finger to my lips to shush her, but it was already too late. “Eve Gilbert, what did I say?”

Goddamnit. “Like I’m going to do anything just because you say to do it, Alice whatever your last name is.”

She must’ve vampire zoomed across the room, because not even a second later, she was sticking her head around the corner and saying, “Then I guess I’m just going to have to make you do it.”

Okay, this was a lot less humorous than I’d thought it would be. My eyes narrowed into a challenging glare. “You can try.”

Her shoulders fell. “Eve, please.” Pointing down the hall, she added, “Show Elena to her room, and then we can watch another movie, okay?”

Whispering quietly, I said, “I’m ruining any authority you’re trying to gain in there, huh?”

“Yeah, a little.”

“Alice, you’re 978 years old. Feel free to say whatever you want, and don’t put up with anything from either of them . . . just don’t seriously hurt Damon.”

“I don’t intend to hurt anyone.”

“Yeah, well, watch both of them. They’re feisty, and you already let Damon bully you once. You’ll tell me what happens?” She quickly nodded, and I turned on my heel as I proclaimed, “Well, since you put it that way, I guess I’d better show Elena to her room.”

When I got to Elena, she quickly whispered, “What was that?”

“I know nobody thinks she threatened me into doing anything, but it made her laugh a little, and she doesn’t do that nearly enough.”

“No, I mean, what’s happening?”

Flicking a side-glance in her direction, I nodded. “I know.”

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough.”

“Then why won’t you just tell me now?”

“It’s a penalty for you not even being here 2 minutes and getting me in trouble.”

Looking back over her shoulder down the hall, she shook her head. “I’m not even sure how you can be in trouble. This isn’t her house. How does she have any say in what happens?”

“I’ll remember you said that when you’re the one who wants a say.” Going to the door between mine and Alice’s, I opened it saying, “This is going to be the easier one to clean, so this is you.” Walking in to the room, Elena flipped on the light and looked around. “It’ll still take a few hours of heavy cleaning to really make it livable, but for tonight, it’ll do as is.” I watched her back, and when she still didn’t say anything tried, “Are you okay?”

Offering me a false smile, she answered, “I’m fine,” and stepping into her room, I closed the door behind me saying, “So, no?”

“No, I am. I – “

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Leaning back against the door, I tilted my head at the bed she was about to carelessly sit on and explained, “If you flop down on it, then you’ll have to deal with a billow of dust . . . not very nice.” Looking back at the bed, she nodded before taking a more considered seat on it, and I tried again. “You went to camp, right?” When she nodded, I asked, “Went on vacations? Did sleepovers?“ She nodded again, and I said, “Then you can sleep somewhere that isn’t your house.”

“I felt a little more welcome those times if I’m being honest.”

And yet she was still here. “I don’t buy that. I know cheerleaders now. You can’t tell me they were all unicorns and sparkles, especially on the first day.” The corners of her mouth turned up into a slight smile, and I added, “But you were probably more perky back then and had the hang of it by the second day . . . this might just take a little longer.”

With a sigh, she asked, “Why don’t you want me here?”

Well, for starters, I was going to have to go stay in Damon’s room if we wanted any alone time together because of her superhuman hearing, and that was way too close to Stefan’s room. “It’s weird . . . uncomfortable . . . awkward.”

“But I’m here all the time.”

“This is different though.”

“It feels like maybe you just don’t want to share again.”

“Well, my room is definitely off limits.”

“What about your piano room?”

“Can you play?”

“You could teach me.”

My eyes narrowed in confusion. She didn’t need to do that to force some kind of connection with me. “I’m still me, Elena. I have walls a few feet thick. You can try to chip away at them, but it’s gonna take time.”

“They’re thicker than they were though. It’s because of who I am now, isn’t it?”

With a sigh, I stepped away from the door and did the thing I’d told her not to do as I landed next to her on the bed. She coughed at the dust cloud and threw a glare at me, so I smirked. “Hey, I said if I were you, I wouldn’t do it, not if I were me. I don’t sit. I flop.” She tried not to smile, and I said, “The problem is that I don’t know who you are now.” Ducking my head, I tried to find the best way to say this. “I should have said this after the Whitmore trip, but – “

“I was horrible . . . I’ve been horrible. It keeps happening even though I don’t mean to do it.”

“To be honest, your horrible side is probably the part of you that I find most authentic . . . well, that and the sometimes needy part of you. I’m a little surprised that you haven’t blamed me for not being there earlier.”

Looking down at her fidgeting hands, she nodded. “I was expecting you, not Matt and Stefan.” With a sad smile, she added, “To be honest, I was a little glad it wasn’t you.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t know what you would do to Jeremy.”

And that right there was probably the reason she’d asked Matt to stay with him instead of me, not that I was going to complain about it, but something told me she was going to be a roadblock to me training him. She’d want to be right there with us and monitoring my every move. “I wouldn’t have killed him.”

“But you would’ve hurt him?”

“I don’t know . . . I don’t exactly think things through in the moment. I just act.”

She shook her head in disappointment. “Yeah, well, I was sure you’d do something a little more than graze him like you did the last time. He might think that scar is cool, but I don’t.”

“In fairness to me, I was having my feet pulled out from under me when that gun went off.”

She was quiet and then finally asked, “Do you know how today happened?”

Change of topic. I could roll with that. I wasn’t ready to get back to the one I’d started just yet, and it would appear she was trying not to argue with me over nothing. “I only got what Matt told me when he found me.”

“Stefan made Jeremy kill a vampire.”

Yeah, Stefan was seriously unhinged right now and hadn’t appeared to learn anything from the mistakes he’d already made. “It wasn’t the guy who went missing from the hospital yesterday was it?”

She finally looked at me. “What guy?”

“The violent criminal that disappeared.” Oh right. She probably didn’t know about that. Waving it off, I said, “Liz called and told me about him.”

“Why’d she call you?”

“I guess because I’m on the Council, and it’s bad press for murderers to get lost on her watch, so she wanted someone with the time and skills to quietly help her hunt him down before the news picked up on it, but she wanted him released back into her custody alive. No vampires involved with a prime candidate for feeding from out of town.”

“Wait, are you saying that Stefan specifically turned him, so Jeremy could kill a vampire?”

“If it was that guy, then yeah . . . I’d say Stefan went to the hospital looking for someone who was about to die anyway and found a victim that he was more comfortable with killing instead.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

With a shrug, I answered, “Meh,” and tried not to laugh at the expression on her face. “If he’d picked anyone else, definitely not, because they would’ve been completely innocent, but you didn’t hear this guy’s rap sheet. On the other hand, Jeremy looked fine to me earlier, no bruises or cuts . . . no limp or any other sign of a fight, and if that’s because Stefan held the guy down, while Jeremy staked him, then the guy wasn’t given a chance to survive in any way, shape, or form, and he’d already been convicted by a jury of his peers. It’s not like he was out there murdering and Stefan caught him in the act. He was already being punished for what he did . . . It’s a pretty dark shade of grey for Stefan. I’ll give you that, but it’s definitely not him at his worst.”

“Was he at his worst when he tried to turn you?”

It seemed like she was trying to get me to see it from her perspective, like if I thought it was wrong to have it done to me, then I should for this guy too, but that’s not how I saw it. “Same shade of gray if I’m being honest. Like I said, he thought that if there was a cure it wouldn’t be permanent.”

“But you’re my sister . . . And how could he do that to you?”

“Desperation? I'm apparently very driven, and he legitimately didn't think he had any other way of dealing with me.”

“What’s he like at his worst?”

“Are you trying to convince yourself that you made the right decision?”

Looking uncomfortable, she found her hands very interesting again all of a sudden. “No. I did the right thing. If I don’t feel the same way anymore, then I need to be honest about it. It wouldn’t be fair to him if I wasn’t.”

Which brought us back to where we’d started. “Is it because of Damon?” She briefly looked at me, and quickly shook her head before looking back down again. “Hey, you remember how Tyler was sired to Klaus?” That got her attention, and she nodded. “You remember how Klaus told him to bite Caroline, and he said no. He left Klaus thinking, ‘I’m not going to do that,’ and then he got some time alone with Caroline and bit her, because it was impossible for him not to do Klaus said?”

She nodded again. “We couldn’t let him be involved in anything we were doing, because he kept defending Klaus, and we knew he would’ve told him . . . I remember. Why?”

“Because you’re sired to Damon.”

Her eyes widened. “No . . . no, that doesn’t make any sense. I – “

“With vampires, the reason why it happens is different than with hybrids, so it does make sense if you felt something for him when you were human, and his blood is what turned you.” She just sat there blinking at me, and I sighed. “When we were at Whitmore, you couldn’t compel anyone during our game, right?” Still nothing. “But you could at the church with April. The only difference between the two times was that before our game, Damon said that on your bunny diet, he really didn’t think you’d be able to do it and have it stick.”

Quickly getting to her feet, she groaned, “No,” and started pacing as she brought her hands to her face in embarrassment.

“Unfortunately, yes. It’s why you dropped whatever plans you had for Rebekah and just took me to her party to make sure I had fun.” She quickly stopped to look down at me, and I said, “It’s why you insisted on Stefan and Bonnie being chaperones for us. It’s why you wouldn’t argue with me at the church even though your cadence sounded mad. It doesn’t change how you feel. You just have to do what he says, and I know that he has been pretty harsh with you since you turned, so I can’t imagine that’s been easy for you when there is a part of you that is dying for his approval.”

There were tears in her eyes as she said, “You must hate me,” and I shook my head.

“I don’t hate you, Elena. I just don’t know how real you are with me when deep down you’re trying to impress him.”

Reaching down for her bags, she said, “I have to go. I have to get out of here. “ By the time she turned to leave, I was already blocking the door. “Eve, move. I can’t be around you right now.”

“Well, tough. That’s the price of living here.”

“No, I’ll go stay with Caroline. I can’t – “

“You can, and you will. We’re doing what we should’ve done a long time ago. We’re talking this out, so sit down.”

My eyebrow arched with the expectation she do what I said, and her bag fell off her arm as her shoulders dropped. “I think I might know who Alice was trying to channel earlier.”

“I don’t do hands on hips. Sit.”

Turning slowly, she went back to the bed and did a fair amount of flopping herself. I waited for the dust to resettle and sat next to her again. Completely unable to look at me, she asked, “How do we fix this?”

“There’s a book in Mom’s container that – “

Getting to her feet again, she quickly said, “Then let’s go get it.”

“Elena.”

Her posture fell as she looked back at me, and then she slowly sat back down again. “Do they know?”

“Damon does. I’m guessing Alice is filling Stefan in on it now, and Damon is going to find that highly entertaining until she starts lecturing him too.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because he holds grudges, and after what Stefan did last week, there’s always a chance he could use this to get back at his brother.”

She started to shake her head. “No, he wouldn’t do - “

“Uh, you just said we couldn’t say anything negative about Klaus around Tyler, because he’d defend him, and it’s exactly what you’re doing now. We are talking about Damon. In the heat of the moment, he is capable of anything, and I know he was thinking about using it to make you a better sister too, but I don’t want that.”

Hanging her head, she went quiet, but I decided to wait her out. “Wouldn’t be such a bad idea, would it? I am my absolute worst around you . . . and what kind of a person has feelings for her sister’s boyfriend?”

“Caroline has a theory.”

She quickly glanced at me. “How many people know about this?”

“A few?”

“Who?”

“Uh, me, Damon, Alice, probably Stefan by now, Caroline, so I’m guessing Tyler . . . Klaus.”

“Klaus knows?!”

“Yeah, I think that one is down to Caroline too.”

I don’t think she could’ve felt more embarrassed if I was trying to make her feel that way. “Why did you tell, Caroline?!”

“Because she’s my best friend, and I didn’t know how to process it when I found out.”

Ducking her head, she nodded and a few moments later asked, “What’s her theory?”

“That it’s not anyone’s fault. Damon did have feelings for you when I met him.” She glanced at me, and I said, “But that started to change the longer he knew me, and by the time you’d started to reciprocate how he used to feel, it was too late, or maybe that you didn’t even realize how you felt until you saw him with me . . . like a ‘You didn’t realize what you had until it was gone,’ kind of thing?” God, this was awkward as hell to say to her.

“If that’s what Caroline thinks, what do you think?”

“All I have are theories, Elena, until you tell me.”

“I can’t.”

With a heavy sigh, I rested my forearms on my knees and sat forward thinking of a way to move past this mental block we both seemed to have. “Stop me when I’m wrong, and we can talk about it.” I flicked a glance at her, and she nodded, so I focused on the hem of my sleeve as I said, “I think that if you’d known about me when I first got into town, then it would have been less of a problem, but the first time you saw me was when I crawled out of that coffin and walked in here a bloody mess, like I belonged here, and Damon was right there to let Stefan know I did. I was a complete stranger to you, but I’d been around long enough not to be one to him, and we had to be close if I’d been living here for months, especially since it was obvious that he’d been covering for me all that time. I wasn’t a stranger to Caroline either, and you felt - "

"Betrayed."

I glanced at her and said, "By them or me?"

"You."

She shot me a slight glare, and my eyebrows arched in surprise. "I'm not sure you can feel betrayed by someone you didn't know existed."

"Then what do you think it was?"

"You felt like I had stolen something from you without you even knowing it."

"Yeah, exactly. Betrayed."

"Uh, not to get pedantic, but I don't think that's feeling betrayed. When people feel like something is being taken from them, it makes them feel fiercely protective of it – jealous - and that’s what you were.”

“I wasn’t jealous.”

With a sigh, I went back to staring at the cuff of my sweatshirt. “Well you were something, and I know it wasn’t envious. You didn’t want to be me, and you certainly haven’t approached this Damon thing, like you were trying to steal him except for once that I saw, so – “

“I never did that.”

“He left for an entire month to go look for me, which most people might think would mean that there was something between us, but you sure looked like you were getting up close and personal with him in your kitchen when you were supposed to be making chili, so I don’t believe that it was a, ‘I’m going to try and move on from Stefan after what he said to me in Chicago and with someone else who is single,’ moment. I think that after what Stefan said, you were desperate to get Damon back and briefly lost the run of yourself. If you weren’t trying to use the promise of you to get him away from me, then you were trying to mark your territory and were putting on a show for me every bit as much as he was.”

Her mouth opened to deny it, but then she slouched and sat back, like she was in a little bit of a bind. She could’ve denied both if it wasn’t either one of them, but I didn’t want more of an answer than that to be honest, so I carried on with the point that I’d been trying to make and picked a loose thread I’d found on the cuff of my sleeve. “Anyway, I think that originally, you were jealous, in general, that I was seemingly taking important people from you, because you are terrified of losing any of them, and you felt like you’d lost your third wheel guy and your third wheel best friend without being able to put up a fight, so you were determined not to let that happen with anyone else.”

She hung her head without refuting that, and I said, “I think that over the summer, you focused on the worst things you could imagine about me to justify to yourself and the others your reasons for not giving me a chance, but since Damon and I were always together, your jealous feelings started to center around him almost exclusively – how I was using him or how I was a bad influence.” With a slight shake of my head, I said, “I mean, bad influence, really? I’d find it laughable if I didn’t think that what that really meant was that after the work you’d put in on making him closer to the way you wanted him to be, I was going taint him in some way by being around him, because I’m not ‘good’ enough by your standards. It certainly wasn’t like I was helping him pluck random people off the street and cheering him on from the side lines while I timed how fast he could drain them dry.”

“Eve.”

So I was getting annoyed just thinking about it. Her whiny plea for me to stop didn’t do much to assuage that. “Am I wrong?”

“We’ll never be able to get past those first few months, will we?”

Hunching over, I shook my head. “I don’t know . . . It got a whole lot harder to do after the way you tried to manipulate me at the bonfire.”

I cast a side-glance at her, and she looked away. After a single nod, her voice sounded strained as she said, “That was my chance, and I blew it.”

“Yeah, you did.” She quickly looked at me, like she hadn’t thought I’d agree with her, and I rolled my eyes. “I’m not saying you’ll never have another chance again . . . I just don’t know when that will be . . . and we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about how I may be human, but to you, it must’ve seemed more like I was your doppelganger, because it felt like I was going to take everyone from you, and that’s what doppelgangers do, but then it became all about Damon. There’s probably some truth to you not knowing what you’d had until it was gone, like Caroline said. There’s also probably some truth to what Stefan thought too – that I make Damon seem like a more viable candidate, but I also think you confused feeling protective of who you thought was yours by right with feeling something more until it became something more.”

Again, she looked down, so I said, “But despite your best efforts, you couldn’t overcome what both Caroline and Damon said more than once before I came out of hiding . . . that if you had a sister, you’d want to know, and it wasn’t because you’d want to know and get on with your life. It’s because you’d want to know her . . . I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the regret you feel for not getting to know me sooner is what has been amplified since you turned, and that is where the possessiveness and neediness is coming from when it appears now.”

When she gave me her attention again, I added, “And for what it’s worth, I think that you wanted me to confirm that he and I were together so you could get over him, but I didn’t do it. That means that even though you probably knew he and I were together, by not confirming it, I allowed you to put those feelings you had for him behind a big wall of denial that allowed those feelings to grow. We’re both at fault for a lot of reasons, or that’s how I see it, and I will help you break this sire bond, because I don’t want anyone controlling you in any kind of way, not because I’m worried about it beyond that. I know you can’t help how you feel, but Damon and I are solid.” We still wouldn’t have had this conversation if I wasn’t 100 percent sure of that.


	32. Homeschooling

After carefully taping the ping pong ball back together, I decided that it was time to indulge in a treat for all my hard work. Standing up from the couch, I went to the nearest patch of wooden floor, and threw the ping pong as hard as I could on the ground. I’d created what I’d hoped would be a smoke flash bomb, the kind that ninjas or magicians used as a distraction while they disappeared in the instant smoke. Normal smoke bombs were good if you wanted to draw out how long an area was filled with smoke, but I wanted something that’d work faster, and it did not disappoint. In fact it’d worked better than I’d expected, because I was completely hidden by smoke when Alice came rushing into the room less than a second later. “Oh my word! Eve, are you okay?”

Giggling at my success, I stepped out of the thickest part of the smoke, so I could see her. “Perfect.” 

She waved the smoke away from her face as she picked up the bag of ping pong balls from the couch saying, “I thought you were supposed to be doing physics.”

As a practical portion of one of my Mom’s lessons, maybe, but it wasn’t anything I had to do. “I prefer chemistry.”

As she looked at the rest of the contents on the couch, she asked, “And where did you even get – “ picking up a bottle, she shook her head and turned it to show me the label as she said, “potassium nitrate or – “ 

She paused to pick up the bottle of magnesium, and I answered, “You’d be amazed at what you can buy online these days, Alice.”

The smoke cleared a little more, and her eyes widened at the pile of completed bombs on the other cushion. “How many of these did you make?”

“100. Only 50 more to go.”

“Why would you need – “

“You never know.”

Letting her arms drop to her sides, she looked up at the ceiling and huffed out a sharp breath. “Nature, give me strength.” Her gaze fell back down to me, and she asked, “What’s the rule about weapons in the house?”

Oh, come on, I was allowed to have a little fun. The guys weren’t here. They were on a road trip to find a solution to this sire bond issue. It hadn’t been that difficult for Alice to get them to work together on it. While Damon may have gotten some amusement out of watching his brother find out about the sire bond, he quickly got sick of hearing about it from both Stefan and Alice. The moment it became a nuisance to him, he told them that he might have a lead on how to get rid of it. Stefan didn't trust Damon to do anything about it without him, because Damon had taken off for a week with me after finding out about the sire bond instead of using this lead he apparently had to help Elena, so he'd gone too. “When the boys are away, the girls get to play?” 

I offered her one of my more devilish grins, and she laughed before I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. “I’ll give you some privacy.”

“It’s not a call. It’s a text.” Looking down at my phone, I added, “From Caroline.” 

“Shouldn’t she be in class?”

“Yep.”

_’We have to do something about this Snake guy.’_

Caroline using my nickname for Bonnie’s professor made me smile. _’I know.’_

_’I’m calling you in 5 minutes.’_

I told Alice that Caroline was going to call, and after briefly pondering why any of us even bothered going to school, she told me to clean up my mess and left. Actually, she said I wasn’t the only one who lived there, so I needed to be mindful of others and clean up my mess, which was a valid point. I’m fairly certain she’d meant that I should consider that other people might not want to live in a pigsty, but if one of my toys accidentally set her on fire, I didn’t think that would be very nice, so I was in the middle of packing up my things to move them back into the safety of my room when Caroline called. 

She’d talked to Matt the way I’d said she should, and he’d filled her in on all the phone calls between the professor and Pastor Young. I’d wanted her to come to her own conclusions on it, so I couldn’t be accused of having influenced her decision, and she thought there was something suspicious about it too. She was also really annoyed, because she’d overheard Bonnie call the professor ‘Shane,’ while talking to Elena, and she’d tried to call Bonnie out on getting too close to the guy, but Bonnie wasn’t having any of it. Apparently, the professor had helped Bonnie start using magic again, and my first response to that brief sentence in what was sure to be a long tirade was to cut Caroline off with, “That’s not good.”

_”I know. It means he’s snaked his way into her good graces, and – “_

“No, he’s done more than that. The spirits don’t want her using magic right now. They’ve cut her off, so it’s non-negotiable until they think she’s learned her lesson. He’s done something else . . . something dangerous.”

_”What is it?”_

Well, it’s why I hadn’t wanted to be more explicit on why Bonnie should stay away from the guy. I hadn’t wanted to give him any ideas. Either he knew lore well enough to know what I’d meant when I was trying to talk to her in code and had decided to act upon it, which would make this at least partially my fault, or it’s like I’d suspected at the time, and this is what he’d been planning all along. “I think he has her using something that isn’t actually considered magic. It’s something only witches can do, and it looks like magic, but it doesn’t act like it. It’s called Expression, and it is extremely powerful, but extremely chaotic. It will take on a life of it’s own and kill her eventually.”

_”Oh my god, what do we do?”_

It meant a lot to me that she didn’t even question how I knew that or if I might be wrong. She just believed me, and for that, Caroline would always be my second favorite person in the world. “You and Elena need to talk to her. She won’t listen to me. I’ll go to my Mom’s storage locker and see if I can find the book I read that in a while ago. You’re going to need proof of some kind to show her, and maybe there’s more in the lock up about it that you can use. He’s doing this for a reason. I think it’s Silas, so I’ll see if I can find anything in there about that guy too. Maybe there’s a link between Expression and Silas.”

_“I’m all for having an intervention, Eve, but I really think you should be there too. You’re the one who knows more about this kind of stuff.”_

“I’ve already tried talking to her, and it didn’t work.”

_“So, you’re just going to give up?”_

“No. I’m going to take me out of the equation, so she’ll be more likely to hear what you’re saying, and I’ll make sure you’re as prepared as you can be ahead of time.”

_“But if I talk to her, then it’ll be like I’m reciting lines about something I don’t understand, whereas you can just come up with answers off the top of your head, because you do understand it, and I think we should get Elena involved too. Bonnie’s already made it clear that she didn’t like me being judge-y about the guy. We need to be a united front on this for Bonnie’s sake.”_

“And the world’s sake.”

_“What?”_

“Alice says that Silas is supposed to bring on some kind of apocalypse.”

_“Okay, well, then you’re doing this, and that’s final. Just go get your books, and I’ll come over after school, so we can go over them.”_

I glanced at my watch. It was only 9:30, but there’s no way I’d make it there and back by the time she was done with school. “If I leave now, I might be back before I have to practice tonight at 8:00.”

_“Then I’ll be there at 9:00.”_

We said our goodbyes, and as I hung up, I studied the light streaming in around the curtains. There was a reason I wasn’t at school right now, and it wasn’t to drive out of state to get research materials for an intervention with a renegade witch, but it was important, and I had been meaning to go there to see if I could find the book that’d had sire bonds in it. It’d make Damon and Stefan’s road trip moot if I went and got the information myself, but maybe they’d find out something else in New Orleans. Having more than one way to get rid of the sire bond wouldn’t be a bad thing, and even if they didn’t find out anything more than I did, they’d at least come back from their journey being in a better place with one another, so it wouldn’t be an entire waste.

Now, how to get to the storage locker. I definitely wouldn’t be able to drive there myself on what was presumably a nice day. “Alice!” She didn’t come into the room as fast as she had at the sound of an explosion, but she was still pretty fast. “How do you feel about us going on our own road trip?”

“What about finishing your school work?”

“I’m already done.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Alice, I’ve done all the homework and projects I need to do for the semester. At this point, all I’m doing is studying for finals, and those are a few weeks away.”

She remained doubtful. “Are you saying they bent the rules just for you?”

“With help from other people. Meredith signed off on a doctor’s note saying I am immunocompromised and can’t be around other students, and Stefan’s in all my classes, so he told all my teachers that he’d bring my work home for me to do and take it back to them every day. I wanted him to tell them that I’m used to a homeschooling environment, so they could give me homework at my own pace instead of making me stay at the same pace as my peers, but either he didn’t do that, or they didn’t take him seriously, because I got the normal amount from all of them. After the first couple of days, I sent a letter to each teacher along with my assignments saying that they could double my workload or triple it, and I’d be there for finals, so they could see that I’d been doing the work myself. I reiterated that I’d need to take the exams in the evening when the other students aren’t around, and in the meantime, I needed something to fill my time, so could I work ahead?”

Giving me a faint smile, Alice said, “I take it they agreed.”

“They did, but it wasn’t all at once. My history teacher took me up on it first. She gave me double the workload the day after she got my letter. The next day, I sent it all back plus a video of my presentation on the Spanish American War that wasn’t due for another week, and she must’ve gotten the word out to the other teachers, because they all started giving me more until they started sending letters back saying that they didn’t have anything else to give me, because they weren’t going to start going into next semester until after finals. I got a few offers of extra credit if I wanted something else to do, so I did that while I was on vacation, and then when we were setting up for Miss Mystic Falls, Caroline said I was making our teachers’ lives harder by making them do more work just to keep me occupied during the day, so I didn’t ask for anything else and decided that unless I’m doing some of the lessons my Mom left for me, I’m done until finals.”

Quickly helping me bag up the rest of my things, Alice replied, “Well, I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised. You do have a way of persisting until you make what you want a reality.” 

“Are you saying I’m pushy?”

Exhaling a laugh, she answered, “Driven is what I’d call it,” and I zipped up my carrier bag before pushing it against the arm of the couch for safe keeping until we came back. “Where would we be going?”

“Where my Mom kept all her books?”

“Are you going to see what you can find about sire bonds?”

“I am actually. Why wait when we can be proactive?”

“And when you’re bored enough to start throwing explosives in the house.” I smiled, and she rolled her eyes. “Fine.” 

We were barely out the door before I got another call, but this time it was from Elena. _”Hey, is it okay if Bonnie and Caroline come over tonight? I was thinking we could have a girls night.”_

Alice’s ears perked up at that. “Tell her yes!”

“Why?”

“It’ll be fun.”

I wasn’t sure about that. What it would be was an opportunity to do this intervention. I just had to get Elena on board with it first. Covering my phone with my hand, so Elena couldn’t hear, I whispered, “How are you at subterfuge?”

“You mean lying?”

“I mean being deceitful to achieve your agenda.”

“Terrible, and you are not going to be mean to your sister. Do you hear me?”

I muttered, “That’s what I thought,” before putting my finger up for her to wait while I headed back to the house. “I need to get something from my room.” Guess I’d left my sunglasses there, so they’d have to do as an excuse. 

Closing the front door behind me after I got inside, I put the phone back up to my ear saying, “Only if we can use it as an intervention for Bonnie . . . and I’m thinking maybe Hayley too, because I think they both have the same problem.”

At Miss Mystic Falls, it’d been apparent to me that Hayley was Professor Shane’s lackey. She wasn’t timid in any way, but there had also been some truth in what Tyler had said about her not being comfortable at Miss Mystic Falls. To someone new in town, like her, a judge at the pageant would’ve looked like one of the elites she felt uncomfortable around, so why would she then sit down and start talking to the professor unless she was picking his pocket? Her hands hadn’t gone anywhere near those from what I saw. She definitely knew him, and both Damon and I were sure that he was why Hayley was really in Mystic Falls. 

That meant the Snake had a witch in Bonnie and a werewolf in Hayley wrapped up in his schemes. Tell me again why it was wrong to harm humans who willingly played games in the realm of supernatural beings? I guess for now, I’d go the peaceful route first and try talking to Bonnie and Hayley, but if that didn’t work, then I was going to have to take matters into my own hands and go with a less peaceful approach on the professor himself.


	33. The Intervention

The buzz I’d gotten from a nice day out with Alice and training this evening with my instructor was quickly dwindling. “Spirit tea? I'm with Caroline on that one.” 

Elena immediately tried to keep the peace. “Eve, can we just have one night where we all get along?”

I assumed Elena was just trying to make sure that Bonnie knew we weren't out to get her, so it'd be easier to talk to her, but if that bag of herbs was what the professor had used to get into Bonnie’s head, then it was as good a reason as any to start raising objections to the guy. All that 'tea' did was make you more susceptible to manipulation . . . wait, maybe it was better if Bonnie chugged that stuff all night. It might be the only way she’d listed to anything any of us had to say. Shrugging a shoulder, I muttered, “Whatever, but my chi is just fine all bottled up, so I won’t be having any, thanks.”

There was a knock at the front door, and happy to have a little more time before confronting her friend, Caroline jumped up from her seat shouting, “I’ll get it!” before vampire sprinting out of the room.

Sitting forward to grab her wine glass, Bonnie moaned, “Tell me that’s the pizza. I’m starving.”

Reaching for the cash in my pocket, I answered, “Well, the last to arrive, has to bring the food, so I’m guessing it is.” Or at least, that’s what I’d told Hayley.

Bonnie quickly shared an uncertain look with Elena, and attempted to smile. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Elena was stopped from answering as Caroline came back into the room following Hayley, with an accusatory, “She says you invited her.”

Getting up from my spot, I held out a bill to Hayley and took the boxes she was carrying. “I thought it’d be entertaining.” I turned to find myself being given disgusted looks from both Elena and Bonnie. God, Elena was good. She was definitely one I needed to watch, because she was a great actress when she wanted to be, as good or maybe even better than Caroline was. You wouldn’t know it to look at either of them, but both she and Caroline had known Hayley would be here tonight.

“How is this entertaining?”

I flipped open the top box to see what it was and handed Bonnie her pizza before answering her. “Setting a wolf lose amongst you hens . . . What’s not entertaining about that?”

Flopping into her seat between Elena and Bonnie, Caroline grumbled, “You know you said pretty much the same thing about inviting Klaus to our dinner party, right?”

I felt someone tap me on the shoulder and looked back. Holding the hundred back out to me, Hayley said, “This is way too much.”

“Well, I don’t have any change. Besides, you’re not going to think it’s anywhere near what you’re owed when tonight’s over.”

“Yeah, I think I’m gonna go, so . . . “

She was actually in on her own intervention. I’d invited her along to see exactly what she’d gotten herself into here, because while I was sure that she knew what the Snake was planning, she had no real idea what any of it meant. As for how I’d gotten her to agree to show up despite that? A bet on my part. I’d told her that if she couldn’t be convinced not to back the Snake, she could use this as a way to gather intel on us and take it back to the guy. 

No bet was made without a certain amount of risk being involved, but if my read on her was correct, then she was a survivor, like Katherine, so if I played this right, then she’d work with me until she got a better offer somewhere else, and I was fine with that as long as I got what I wanted in the meantime and prepared for her to screw me over at every turn. I already had a good idea of how the good professor had lured her into his trap, so all I really needed to do was confirm it and find a way to better his offer. “You owe it to yourself to stay. It’s the only way you have any hope of righting the plane before you crash and burn.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That wasn’t cryptic or anything.”

I was going to kill her if she continued on her current trajectory. That’s what I'd meant, but something told me she got the general gist. “Don’t forget ominous . . . Stay. Hang out. See what it’s like to be a normal girl for a night, and you’ll probably leave here thinking you haven’t had it so bad.”

Leaning closer, she whispered, “You know you can’t con me, right?”

“What I know is that most people can be persuaded into anything given the right motivation . . . something I think you might know all too well . . . but I seem to fall short with the people behind me for some reason. I think you and I speak a more similar language.”

“They do give off a ‘sheltered teenagers of privilege,’ vibe.”

“Oh they’re entitled to the core and think they can do no wrong.”

With a sigh, Elena said, “You know we can hear you, right?” and I shrugged. “It’s nothing I haven’t already said to you.” I opened the lid on the remaining pizza, so Hayley could take a slice or two. There’s no way I was going to eat something she’d brought until she’d eaten it first. Bonnie was good. Caroline had blood bags for she and Alice. Elena had eaten a deer or something before everyone got here. Hostess job complete, I made my way back to my chair.

“Yeah, but why are you agreeing with _her_?”

Getting comfortable, I opened the lid on the box again and studied what was left as I answered, “What am I supposed to do, defend you?”

“Yes.”

“But it’s true.”

Before Elena could respond, Alice came into the room with a bright smile directed at me. “Oh, look, your friends are all here. I told you this would be a hoot . . . a night in with the girls. No boys allowed.”

Alice still didn’t have any idea what was going on right now, but she’d play her part when the time came.

Glancing from Alice to Hayley, who was awkwardly taking a seat on the floor as Alice stepped around her on her way to the other couch, I said, “The owl is Alice,” and then proceeded to point to everyone in the room saying, “Vampire, werewolf, witch, vampire, vampire . . . so maybe not that normal, but as close to normal as you could probably stomach.” I figured it was best if everyone was at least on the same page about what everyone was from the start.

Taking in her surroundings, Hayley muttered, “Something tells me I’m not the only one, ‘Lone Human in the group.’”

“Yeah, well, it’s certainly not because I’m one of the groupie types. It’s just the life I lead.”

“Because you’re a hunter?”

Making sure she hadn’t done anything to the pizza slice I’d selected, I answered, “What gave it a way?” and she fired back with, “Well, it isn’t the company you keep.”

Sounding annoyed, Elena asked, “Why is it such a big deal that she doesn’t kill every vampire she meets? It can’t be that uncommon.”

The look Hayley gave Elena was almost priceless in my estimation. “Have you met any other hunters?” Elena shrugged a shoulder, and Hayley answered, “Then you know what they’re like . . . I’ve never heard of a vampire hunter that kills werewolves though. Hunters usually specialize in a type.”

Bonnie chimed in with, “She hunts witches too,” and Elena shot her a look. It seemed to surprise Bonnie. “What?”

Elena tilted her head in Alice’s direction, since her husband was the witch I’d killed, and Alice said, “Why don’t we talk about something nicer than death and killing . . . Maybe we could try a game?”

Bouncing in her seat, Caroline said, “I have one . . . How about Never Have I Ever?”

Tossing her head back, Hayley groaned, like she was above such a childish game, and I shared a look with Alice. Yeah, no, she didn’t know what that was either. Trusting that Caroline had chosen a winner to get this thing going, I asked, “How do you play?”

“Okay, so we go in a circle and take turns saying something we’ve never done, and if anyone else has, then they have to drink.”

A little on the nose, but promising. Just needed to bait the hook in the right way to get Hayley involved. She’d want to do something if I didn’t. “What if you don’t drink?”

“Then it means you haven’t done it.”

“No, I mean, what if you don’t like it?”

Turning to me, Alice said, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want, Eve,” and Caroline got up to go to the bar saying, “She’ll be fine.”

“Hello, lone human here. I’m at a bit of a disadvantage.”

Piping up, Bonnie said, “I’m no different than you on that front. You can have some of my wine if you want?”

That was nice of her, but I didn’t particularly want to start venturing into unknown alcohol territory tonight. As Hayley got up to go check out what was behind the bar, I put my pizza box to the side and stood saying, “Thanks, but I think I’ll stick with bourbon. I just don’t like the smell of wine,” before I headed out to get Damon’s bottle from my trunk. Sure, there was plenty behind the bar, but I might as well waste a little more of his top shelf stuff for this. When I got back, things were a little tense. The lines had clearly been drawn, the Mystic Falls Three vs. Hayley, and a clueless Alice playing hostess. Taking back my seat, I asked, “So, who wins?”

Elena answered, “There are no winners,” at the same time Hayley said, “The last one standing,” and a moment later Caroline pointed at Hayley saying, “Oh, you are so on.”

Damn. It looked like I was out of the running for that. I shared a look with Bonnie that seemed to suggest she thought the same thing, and then she shook her head, like not to even bother saying anything, because they wouldn’t listen anyway. She was probably right. Caroline most likely felt like she had something to prove with Hayley, because she definitely wasn’t happy with how much time Hayley had been spending with Tyler lately. As if on cue, she quickly said, “So, I’ll start,” and Hayley cut her off.

“Never have I ever killed someone.”

I exhaled a laugh at Alice muttering, “Oh for heaven’s sake,” over Hayley going right back to talking about death and killing. “I thought we were supposed to say something we’ve never done.”

Caroline was quietly seething, so Bonnie explained, “Oh no, it’s okay to say something you’ve done if you want to drink.”

After taking a small sip, I nodded towards Bonnie and said, “Speaking of . . . you probably should.”

“I’ve never – “ My eyebrows shot up, and she quickly amended what she’d been about to say. “Okay, you don’t count.”

“And why not?”

“Because you’re sitting here right now.”

“And the same goes for Jeremy during your dark magic phase, huh?”

“I did that to stop Klaus from - “

Nudging her with her elbow, Caroline said, “Come on, Bon. Fair is fair, and technically, you did kill both of them.”

Taking a reluctant drink, Bonnie shot me a look, and Alice asked, “Is it my turn?”

I answered, “Go for it,” and she said, “Never have I ever played this game.”

Nice one. She and I were the only two who didn’t have to drink. That might be the other way to be the last one standing. I was up next, and I wasn’t the one who was supposed to introduce the topic of Bonnie’s intervention. Caroline or Elena were. What should I say I’d never done? “Um . . . Never have I ever had a bicycle?”

Elena’s face fell before she took a drink along with everyone else including Alice, and in my peripheral vision, I noticed Hayley’s body language shift somewhat. It was clear that Elena and I were sisters, so why had Elena gotten something as normal to childhood as that when I hadn’t? That meant that Hayley didn’t know everything about me, just whatever the professor knew, and it didn’t include details like my upbringing. I felt that was pretty important. Maybe Pastor Young told him that there was a teenage girl claiming to be a hunter on the Council at some point and the professor had put it together with the rumors that were going around out there about the teenage huntress with the indestructible stake, but he didn’t know more than that.

After me, Elena had a rather mundane ‘never have I ever,’ followed by a slightly more interesting one from Caroline. “Never have I ever tried to steal someone else’s boyfriend.” She was focused on Hayley, who was rolling her eyes and messing with her by bringing the cup to her lips without actually drinking, but after a prompt from me, Elena’s the only one who had to drink, which Caroline was a little slow to notice. When she did, she tossed both of us apologetic looks.

More mundane with Bonnie, and this game was kind of boring, but then it got back to Hayley. “Never have I ever killed more than 10 people.”

That would put Alice and I both into a different category than the others, but I felt like it’d been directed more at me than Alice. “People? No. Monsters? That’s a different story.”

She rolled her eyes, “Monsters is too specific. I want to know who I’m in the room with.”

Sure she did. Finally, Caroline decided to get this show on the road. “Too bad Shane isn’t here. He’d have to drink until it got up to at least 12.”

Bonnie immediately snapped, “What are you even talking about right now?” and I was starting to see what Caroline had been talking about earlier with Bonnie being hyper-sensitive to anything negative said about the man.

I did my job and jumped in to help. “She’s talking about how he took Pastor Young’s grief over the loss of his wife, used it to connect with him, and then most likely hypnotized the man into killing himself and 11 other people in his farmhouse.”

“Oh, come off it, Eve. He didn’t do that.”

Caroline gently said, “Actually, he might have.” When Bonnie looked at her, Caroline added, “April said they met at a conference a while ago, so Matt looked into it, and there were a lot phone calls between the two, especially on the day it happened.”

“Well, couldn’t he have been trying to offer him support, and it just wasn’t enough?”

Elena tried, “He could have, but – “

Bonnie’s attention shot to me. “You’re taking her word for it?”

Sharing a look with me that said she got what I’d meant when I said I hadn’t wanted to be a part of the discussion, Caroline took a deep breath and tried again. “It’s not just Eve. I think the phone calls are weird.” With that she got Bonnie’s attention back and added, “I think it’s even weirder that he just happened to be here to help with the Hunter’s Curse and showed up again to be a judge for Miss Mystic Falls.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I just don’t see him the way you do.”

And that was a swing and miss, but I knew we’d get back around to it again. Slumping back in my chair, I muttered, “Clearly,” and went to take a drink, but stopped when Hayley said, “I’m changing mine.” I waited, and she said, “Never have I ever killed more than 20,” and Alice groaned, but I knew why Hayley did it. An average pack was somewhere between 10 and 20, although they could be bigger than that with the right leader or if they were family, and she obviously knew I’d killed at least the pack outside of town. Tyler’s not the one who told her I did it, because I asked him about it, but that massacre was why she’d thought he was on the run from Mystic Falls when they met, so she’d heard of it by the time he met her and had been told I was responsible for it by someone else, probably the professor, after Tyler left her to come back here.

Now she was sizing me up in just about the most blatant way possible, but I had no idea how many monsters I’d killed. I was pretty sure that I’d killed over 20 just since I’d been in Mystic Falls. Like two-dozen hybrids, but I had to give 5 or 6 of those to Stefan. Add in the 14 or so from the werewolf pack, and you had over 30. Were there anymore? Oh, there were 4 or 5 the tomb vampires at the farmhouse. Mason. How could I forget him? Any others? Mikael, and I guess Alice’s husband. Anyone else? I felt like there probably were, but any way you looked at it, I’d racked up over 40 so far in my calculations. I went to take a drink, and she quickly said, “More than 30.” I went to take a drink again. “40?” Add 17 for my favorite stake to what I’d already tallied and you got over 50, almost 60. “50?” I brought the bottle to my lips, and her forehead creased before she said, “60?” There were quite a few more than the 17 for my indestructible stake, so I went to drink again, and she started to say, “70,” but Elena, who had been overly quiet got involved.

“Stop it. You’re making her out to be something she isn’t.”

Finally taking a drink, I retorted, “A hunter extraordinaire?” and then glanced from her to Bonnie. “No? From the looks on your faces, I’m guessing it’s more that I’m a monster.”

Following my lead, Elena quickly shook her head. “No, you’re not. Tell them it isn’t true.”

“What?”

“That you haven’t really killed – “

“Why would I lie?”

“No, you couldn’t have – “

“I’d actually put my numbers in the high 80s/low 90s. Oh yeah, I forgot the 2 humans I killed saving you. Let’s say low 90s.”

At that point, I was mostly pushing her with my blasé attitude to see how she responded. There were tears in her eyes as she said, “Then I don’t want you anywhere near Jeremy.”

Yeah, she might be playing it up a little for her part in this show, but I’d been getting the sincerity of that sentence loud and clear from her over the last couple of days. “That’s not up to you.”

Elena’s response to that was a little more authentic. “What?! Yes, it is. He’s my brother!”

“So? I told him I’d train him, and he agreed. It has nothing to do with you, and I am the one who is most qualified to help him now.”

“The only thing you’re qualified to do is be a serial killer!”

Taking another drink, I muttered, “I prefer Predator of Predators, Hunter, or Huntress, thank you very much,” and sitting forward, Alice focused on Elena as she softly said, “Sweetheart, there is a reason the witches in Savannah made Joseph fear her for almost 18 years, presumably starting on the day she was born . . . She was born to do what she does. Witches who hold the balance of nature as their core belief wouldn’t have allowed her to be born if she weren’t meant to right some kind of imbalance.”

“She wasn’t born to go around murdering everyone in sight. Her parents turned her into this.”

“If by ‘this,’ you mean one of the smartest, kindest, most courageous people I’ve met in my 999 years, then I’d say that was Eve given what I know about how she was raised.”

999? Alice was 21 when she was turned. That was one small piece of the puzzle about her life that I no longer needed to learn. I should find out when her birthday was and give her a millennium birthday party. Caroline could help. I might’ve gotten a little distracted by the prospect of doing something nice for Alice, but I still heard Elena say, “How can you defend her? She killed your husband.” 

So bringing that up now was okay, or was it just okay because Elena was the one who was asking? I wasn’t sure how genuine she was being now or how much of it was part of her act, but either way she was being a hypocrite. “I loved him, but I have always had terrible taste in men, and he was a terrible man. I was blind to it, and she helped me out of a situation I couldn’t escape on my own, because I couldn’t see it for what it was while I was in it.”

“So, what, you just swapped your co-dependency from him to her?”

She could attack me all she wanted, but attacking Alice had never been part of the plan. “Elena, that’s enough.”

At my tone, her attention shifted back to me. “How do you do it? And don’t say it’s because you’re all part of some club made up of people who are truly alone in the world, because it sure seems like you all have one another. There’s her and Imelda and Katherine and Klaus. They all let you get by with doing anything you want with absolutely no consequences. Even after you shot Alec with a crossbow the first time you met, he went on to believe you were family in like a couple of weeks. I want to know why.”

“Not really sure what it is you want me to say, since you discarded the answer in your question, so I’m gonna go with my charming personality winning them over?”

“See, that’s just it. You’re not charming. Most of the time you’re terrible to people, and they seem to love you for it.“

Alice responded before I could. “You’re being childish and rather silly now.” Elena’s mouth dropped open, and I’d liked what I’d heard, so I waited to see what Alice said next, because it was clear she wasn’t done. “You’re acting as though she truly is a monster when she has a good heart. She always takes the side of whoever is weakest no matter how powerful that person may be, because that’s who she is at her core, not a monster. And for the record, I don’t know about this club you mentioned, but she does have a way of reaching people that would otherwise be lost, because she was so isolated growing up that she notices when others are alone and lets them know she can see them in ways they’ll hear. I’d wager that makes the others you listed feel as protective of her as I do. That’s why she can get by with knocking some sense into us when we need it.”

Well, I hadn’t been expecting that from Alice, and it made me feel a little uncomfortable to have my theory of the Lonely Club acknowledged like that. “See, Elena, I’m a killer with a heart of gold.”

Giving me a cross look, Alice snapped, “Oh, hush you,” so I took another drink, because this entire endeavor was bothering me now. “The things she thinks about you pale in comparison to how your see yourself, Eve.”

This wasn't supposed to be an intervention for me. Sloshing my bottle as I brushed that off, I rather cheerily said, “Excellent. I dub thee my herald going forward, Alice. You can set me straight and assist in spreading the Legend of Eve far and wide,” and Elena threw me a dirty look.

“Are you drunk already?”

A little tipsy if I was being honest, but I might as well sell it. Hugging the bottle to my chest, I shook my head before going off script. “No . . . Hey, is it my turn? Never have I ever used Expression magic after being hypnotized for hours by a narcissistic asshole who murdered 12 innocent people and is trying to end the world by bringing Silas back.”

“Expression magic!” Alice unwittingly played her part to perfection, and we were back on track. “Oh no, no, no, Bonnie, tell me you didn’t.”

“What? It was just a few small spells.” While Alice buried her face in her hands, like it was the worst thing ever, Bonnie’s eyes narrowed and turned on me. “And how do you know that he called it Expression?”

“Because that’s what it’s called when you use magic and it isn’t spirit magic, ancestral magic, or dark magic, none of which you can do right now. I told you that you were powerful on your own and that he needed a Bennett witch, which is why you should’ve stayed away from him instead of letting him mess around with your mind.”

“He was helping me with the mental block I had!”

Lifting her face, Alice said, “Witches can’t be compelled for a reason. It’s to prevent those who are unworthy from being able to wield magic through them without their consent. 5 minutes is a long time to give someone that kind of access to your mind, but hours? He wasn’t helping you with your mental block. He was helping you unlock the door to a power you cannot control. You need to be cleansed to shut that door again.”

I added, “The sooner, the better,” and Bonnie looked from Alice to me. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting you take – “

Caroline touched her leg to get her attention. Pulling one of the books I’d given her out from behind the cushion she was sitting against, Caroline cautiously said, “Bon, they know what they’re talking about . . . It’s in here . . . The page is marked.” Bonnie took the book and put it in her lap as Caroline added, “It’ll kill you if you don’t do something about it now.”

Bonnie mostly just stared at it, and I didn’t think that was a good sign. I thought it was a worse sign when her head slowly lifted in my direction. “You have no right – “

“Okay, I get that you think I took your powers before and that makes this seem like a replay, but that’s not what this is.”

“Then tell me what it is, because from where I’m sitting – “

“You’re clinging to something that is going to kill you, because you don’t think you’re relevant without it, but that’s just not true. You don’t need magic to be important. You only think you do, because - ” 

“Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me what I think now?!”

“Nope.” I quickly launched myself up and gracefully rolled myself over the back of my chair, and by gracefully, I mean not gracefully at all. I mostly tumbled over it and landed in a heap on the floor. I heard some laughter, which had been the goal, and glanced at Alice from behind the chair, as I whispered, “Did it work?”

Her eyes were glued to Bonnie, but she gave me a quick nod. I was in a fairly safe position unless Bonnie moved the chair with her mind. The vampires should be mostly okay, since Bonnie had only had a small taste of this kind of magic so far. Elena had wanted to use this as a chance to work together on something, so I'd said, ‘Okay, we do things your way for Bonnie, and we do them my way for Hayley,’ and with Bonnie, she'd wanted to essentially be the ‘nice twin’, because Bonnie was her friend. Again, I'd agreed, but then as the day progressed, she got worried that she wouldn’t be able to say what needed to be said, so in that event, she wanted me to be the ‘mean twin’ until she figured out what she wanted to say, and that’s what seemed to be happening now, because while she was doing an excellent job of playing the worst version of herself with me in front of Hayley, she was doing a terrible job with Bonnie.

Now, as per Elena's wishes, I was supposed to push Bonnie just enough to freak her out about something she didn’t realize about herself yet. Peeking around the chair a little more, I found Hayley, who was also watching the other three, like she was about to bolt, and when she saw me, I tilted my head to the side of the couch. After a quick nod, Hayley shifted to her left and got behind it. As soon as she was in the clear, I popped my head up from behind the chair to focus on Bonnie again. “But I am going to tell you that without the magic, you feel as powerless as Matt feels sometimes, and – “

Hands clenched down by her sides, she’d finally heard enough. “Stop pretending like you have any _idea_ \- ” I ducked back behind the chair when the bulb in the lamp next to me exploded. “I – I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – “

Stepping in front of her, Elena coddled her best friend. “Bonnie, Bonnie, hey . . . look at me . . . It’s all right. It wasn’t that bad. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want, okay?”

There’s was being Bonnie’s friend, and then there was that. “A) She’s paying for the lamp shade and the bulb that goes with it whether she wants to do it or not. B) – “

“Eve, you’re not helping!”

“Well, I’m done playing nice. There’s respecting people enough to allow them to exert free will over their own lives and then there’s letting you morons destroy the world, which infringes on everyone else’s free will . . . sanctimonious pricks.”

“Eve, I know you’re mad, but – “

Not really. I was mostly in control of my stomach. “Oh you have no idea.“

“It’s gonna make you sick if – “

“And if I do, I’m coming for you, little sister, so I can at least ruin your fucking shoes and get something out of tonight.”

“Caroline, can you – “

Sounding distressed, Caroline, who had been in on all of this except for me having to make up for Elena if Elena failed, cut her off, “No, Elena. I will not handle her to make your life easier, especially when it’s obvious that she is right. Bonnie opened the door to this thing a tiny fraction, and now she’s trying to kill Eve over a conversation meant to help her. That’s not who Bonnie is, and pretending like everything is okay will only make her think this kind of magic is okay when it’s clearly not. Whatever this cleansing is, it’s what she needs . . . Eve, are you okay? I smell blood.”

Thank you, Caroline, for actually playing your part the way you were supposed to do it. I gave myself a once over and noticed a couple of small holes from the shrapnel that had made its way through the sleeve of my shirt. “Fine and dandy, but as soon as y’all leave, I’ve got a Professor to kill.”

“No!”

Okay, I was expecting Bonnie to say that. I wasn’t expecting Elena’s voice to join it. My stomach sank as I slowly lifted from my spot behind the chair, eyes trained on my co-conspirator. So far, things had gone fairly okay. Alice did well. Caroline did well. Elena had been doing well during her whole freak out over how many people I’d killed so Hayley could get a front row seat to how things could really be around here. 

I’d wanted Hayley to believe that it wasn’t the Mystic Falls Five against Hayley. It was the Mystic Falls Three against the Three Outsiders, something that Alice had even unwittingly played into by defending me to Elena. Something as superficial as that was how connections were formed, no matter how subconscious. That connection could then be built upon, and Hayley would be more likely to tell me what I needed to know to stop the professor after seeing where his interference had led with Bonnie, or that had been the plan. This felt like a massive deviation, because it was no longer just a plan of mine to get Hayley on side, but reality showing through. Elena and Bonnie consistently went against me every single fucking time I tried to do something. “No?”

“You can’t kill him. He’s human.”

My eyes narrowed in suspicion. “That’s not it. What was with the desperation in your voice?”

Elena quickly shared a look with Bonnie and then looked at me. “He might be able to help with Jeremy . . . to get him to – “

“He got to you too.”

“No. I just . . . I can’t have Jeremy hating me, and – “

The Snake told Bonnie he could help with Jeremy, and Bonnie told her, so she told Bonnie all about what was planned for her today, or she’d felt guilty, told Bonnie about what was planned and why, and Bonnie had told her that the Snake might be able to help with Jeremy, or some variation of those situations had happened. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Elena had blabbed our plans, and that’s why Bonnie hadn’t been phased by Caroline and Elena clearly being in on this intervention. It’d all been a show for me, because she’d known about it beforehand. It was definitely why Elena had wanted me to be the one to push Bonnie if she didn’t, so Bonnie could have a reason to lose her shit and then just make a light bulb explode. We were all actresses playing parts, but some of us were better than others, and those two had turned this into an intervention for me and Caroline, instead of Bonnie. Interrupting Elena, I glanced from her to Bonnie. “You wanna explain this?”

I pointed at the lamp, and in the time Bonnie took to look at it and say, “I didn’t mean for it to hurt you. I was just – “ I’d thrown one of the enhanced homemade ninja bombs I’d made earlier today at my feet.

As the smoke immediately filled the room, I glanced in Alice’s direction while ducking back down behind the chair and whispered, “Run.” She was clear of the room before I even said, “I wonder what this smoke will do to your powers,” louder with my next breath, and a second later, every window along the front side of the living room exploded inwards. Of course I was on the wrong side of the chair for that, but I think my point had been made.

I was trying to figure out the best way to remove a massive shard of glass that’d gone into my side when Caroline came sprinting around the chair to help, and this time the, “I’m sorrys,” coming from Bonnie were a lot more genuine considering she really hadn’t meant to do that. Pulling a piece of glass out of my arm and another one out of my shoulder, Caroline finally saw the one in my side. “That looks bad. No, don’t – “

I pulled it out anyway and with a grunt used the back of the chair to stand. As the smoke dissipated with the influx of fresh air, I shook my head before focusing on Bonnie, “There was nothing in the smoke that could hurt you, but even if it’d had the same kind of herbs that were used on Imelda to take away her powers, it wouldn’t have worked on you, because you don’t get your magic from spirits anymore or nature, and even dark magic just perverts nature, which means it has its twisted roots there. Expression is none of those things.” 

Surveying the damage done to the room, I continued. “A conscious mind that learned the consequences of using spirit magic to kill a human enemy didn’t do this, a subconscious mind that knows it no longer has any limitations did. If you’d just wanted to protect yourself and get the smoke away from you as fast as possible, then you would’ve pushed out. Instead, your powers pulled in . . . mostly at me. There’s glass everywhere, but not a single piece of it is anywhere close to where the others were in the room.” When my focus returned to her, she was looking around the room in horror, and I added, “You lost control for a split second, and look at what it did without you.” Glancing at Elena, I added, “It will kill her if she doesn’t get rid of it, and you want to manipulate me into saying it’s okay for the man who did this to her to also fuck with Jeremy’s mind?”

Putting her hand on my shoulder, Caroline said my name, and I took a deep breath to calm down. “I know . . . I know.” Looking down at my side and the blood along with the other pieces of glass that were still embedded in me, I glanced at Elena again. “You have until I find the good professor to get done what you want, but I’m not holding back when I do find him, and I will not allow either one of you to wreck this world for your own selfish reasons.”

Taking a step closer, Elena pleaded, “Eve,” but I shook my head. “Not now.”

“What?”

I didn’t want to hear anything she had to say right now. How hard was it to understand that? From the doorway, Alice clearly got it, as she said, “I think you should find somewhere else to stay tonight.”

Quickly turning on her, Elena shouted, “You don’t have a say in this!”

“You certainly thought I did when I was the one advocating for you to stay here.” Elena took half a step back at Alice’s controlled tone, and Alice’s eyes darted to Bonnie before she turned her attention back to Elena. “If tonight was intended to help Bonnie see the error of her ways, then I wish I’d been told about it, but if Expression has a hold on Bonnie, then it will go much more smoothly for Bonnie if she accepts that she needs to get rid of it before she seeks help. To remove it against her will could also lead to her death. Eve asked, and subterfuge isn’t something I’m good at doing, so I understand why I wasn’t told if I might’ve given it away before Bonnie was ready to hear it, and she does need to hear it. What you shouldn’t have done was betray Eve's confidence and then try to trick her into thinking this isn’t a problem to get what you want. You may not have known her long, but she is your sister - your protector - and when you choose what you want over her, bad things can happen.” Glancing at me and the state of my injuries, her face fell, as she added, “Stay the night somewhere else, think about why she might be angry, and try again tomorrow.”

Caroline grumbled, “Oh, it’d better take a whole lot longer than a day,” and earned a glare from Bonnie.

“Stay out of it, Care.”

“What? I’m sorry, but it’s true. How much is one person supposed to take?” Looking at Elena, she added, “What did Alec say to you? She isn’t going to wait around here forever while you figure out whether or not you want to be her sister, and I never thought I’d say this about you, but if I lose my best friend because of how selfish you can be sometimes, then – “

Bonnie was quick to shut her down. “With best friends like you, who needs enemies? At least Elena told me I was walking into an ambush.”

I opened my mouth to counter that when a hand tugged on my elbow. I’d been aware that Hayley was making her way around the room, but I’d mostly been ignoring her, because if she wanted to leave what was clearly a hostile environment, she should. She didn’t have to tell me about it. She could just go, and I’d catch up with her later, but it was a little more difficult to ignore her when she tugged harder and leaned in to whisper, “Let’s get you cleaned up before you start a blood riot in here.” 

I glanced at her and then at where she was looking as Bonnie and Caroline’s spat continued. Elena’s eyes were going a little red and there were a few black veins starting to protrude under them. I didn’t want to have to stake her, but it wasn’t until Caroline nudged me to let me know she’d be okay if I went with Hayley that I decided to go. With a heavy sigh, I let Hayley pull me across the room and noticed a look that she shared with Alice. My guess would be that Alice had sent her and would set things right in my absence. Maybe she’d throw the other two into a tornado, so they could experience the kind of chaos Expression magic apparently had.

As we exited the room, I pulled my arm free of Hayley’s hand saying, “I can walk just fine. I don’t need your help.”

“Funny. That’s why I thought I was here.“

I sullenly grumbled, “That’s different. I need you to see why you have to be more practical and put what you need above what you want, so the world doesn’t come crashing down around us, and then you can maybe get what you want. You help me. I help you. It’s an even trade.” Glancing at the blood leaking down the left side of my body, I noticed how much of it was starting to squish in my sock as it pooled inside my newest pair of ruined Converse. Should’ve warn my boots. “A trade that doesn’t include you playing the part of nurse. Bet your bedside manner is terrible anyway.”

She snorted before giving me a side-glance and then looped her arm through mine to give me added support as she said, “Yeah . . . but I think I’m going to enjoy watching you pull the rest of that glass out, and since that would be the highlight of the shitty night you just put me through, why would I want to miss out on that?”

Yeah, right. She wanted something out of this the same way I did. I took a right at the hall that was mine and launched into the start of my pitch. “He told you he could help you find your parents, and that’s why you’re helping him, right?”

“Has anyone ever told you, you’re a little creepy?”

“Yeah.” She glanced at me and exhaled a laugh. “You get that finding monsters is what I do, right?”

“Could you find them without killing them?”

Maybe my plan for her had worked in spite of or because of the damage done at the end, but my hand that was under my jacket, like I was putting pressure on the wound in my side, was firmly wrapped around the stake I’d dipped in wolfsbane in case of close encounters. If she crossed me right now, I’d knock her out until I could figure out what to do with her, but I wanted to try wheeling and dealing first. “If they’re not actively murdering people when I find them or are in wolf form, then they’ll be safe. I’m a sucker for animals.” She chanced another look at me, and I said, “You know they’re probably dead, right? They wouldn’t have let you go if they had a choice in it. The strongest ties in a pack are the - “

“Ones between family members? I know. If they are dead . . . that would suck, but it doesn’t mean they’re all dead.”

“So, you’re just looking for some family.”

“Aren’t you?”

Her eyes flicked towards me again. “It’s not going terribly well, but I get what you mean. I’ll find who I can . . . and to better the offer, I’ll make sure you don’t have to feel guilt for helping destroy the world.”

“You really think that’s what Shane wants?”

“I think he wants to raise Silas, and he doesn’t really care what the consequences are, because he wants what he thinks Silas can give him.”

“What’s that?”

I didn’t know what that was yet, but I’d find out. “Well, what he thinks he’ll get and what he’ll actually get are two totally different things. Alice says Silas was a myth almost 1000 years ago, which means he’s been locked up wherever he is for who knows how long, and a guy that’s been imprisoned for thousands of years isn’t going to get out and start granting favors.”

“He’s going to be pissed, isn’t he?”

“Could be a short family reunion.”

She exhaled a harsh breath. “All right, I’m in, but I don’t want to get involved . . . What do you need from me?” Information, first and foremost, and then we’d take it from there.


	34. Responsibility

Lounging on the couch, I struggled not to smirk at the eye rolls coming my way from the other side of the room as I crunched through another bite of my cereal. I didn’t use milk these days unless I was also using a wooden cooking spoon, because I didn't want to get a metal spoon frozen to my lips, but I wasn't going to use one of those giant spoons with my sister here. The dry cereal must’ve been extra-loud for a baby vamp, a baby vamp who apparently thought she needed a break even though she should have plenty of energy to spare. Taking my spoon, I pointed it in the direction of a patch of floor with glass still covering it. “You missed a spot.”

Elena tossed a look at me over her shoulder as she made her way back to the broom she’d just propped up against the wall. “I didn’t miss it. I just haven’t gotten to it yet.”

My eyebrows arched as I looked down at my bowl with a barely concealed smile and dipped into the sugary goodness once again. “Just doing my part to help.”

With a huff, she snatched up the broom and made her way to the glass saying, “You know this would go a lot faster if both of us were doing it.”

“Mm . . . I said something similar to Stefan once. You know what his response was?”

She gave me a cautious look. “What?”

“Nah, I don’t want to do that.”

Rolling her eyes, she got to sweeping and muttered, “I thought you said that they would be back this morning.” I did, but only because I’d managed to buy us some time. They were supposed to be home last night, but when Damon called to say that, I convinced him to take Stefan for a night out to take his mind off of Elena breaking up with him, because I was having a night in with the girls. Hopefully there was less carnage in their adventures than there had been in ours. “You know, this isn’t just my mess.”

“Nope. It’s Bonnie’s too.” I noticed the brief hesitation in her movements. Bonnie was with the ‘Good’ Professor, wasn’t she? It’s not like she was with him to confront him over his lies either. More likely she was getting him somewhere safe before giving him a chance to explain himself. He’d talk his way out of it the same way he'd talked himself into her good graces. Well, desperate times called for desperate measures, and I had the most desperate of measures in mind for dealing with him.

Resuming her sweeping, Elena shook her head. “It’s not her fault. You pushed her into it.”

“You know, you sound an awful lot like an abuser apologist right now.” When she stopped to look at me in disbelief, I smiled more blatantly before continuing my defense. “And you’re missing the point. Bonnie isn’t stupid. What happened last night was beyond her conscious control. After what happened the last time I pushed her into using her powers against me, she was trying to control her anger, so she wouldn’t attack, but her powers took on a mind of their own to protect her, and that should scare the hell out of her and worry you . . . as should how much you’re struggling to control your blood cravings to be honest. I think the best course of action might be for you to switch to blood bags. I could make you smoothies the way I used to do for Mom. They’re apparently very good. Blood heated to body temperature; heparin to keep it from clotting; egg whites for extra albumen to give it a little boost. The egg whites also make it a little thicker and frothier, and a dash of mango chutney to compliment the copper flavor.“

“God, would you stop?! That sounds awful.”

“Then why are your eyes turning red?”

She quickly turned away from me to hide them and kept sweeping as she asked, “What does any of this have to do with you not helping me clean this up?”

My response sounded about as faux-innocent as I could make it. “Oh, you wouldn’t want me to cut myself and be forced to shoot you in the head with a wooden bullet to keep you away from me when you lose control, would you?”

Her shoulders fell before she glanced at me and quickly looking away again. “If this is about last night – “

“You need to work on it. I haven’t said anything about it yet, but now that Stefan’s out of the picture, that bunny diet of yours isn’t doing you any favors.”

“And you think you’re the one who can help me with that?”

“Yep.” She didn’t respond and went back to sweeping, so I added, “Make sure you get everything. I walk around in here without my shoes all the time, and if I cut myself a week from now, then – “

“You live in a house full of vampires. I get it.”

“No. I’ll be pissed, and the only vampire around here that can’t control themselves is you.” She shot me another look over the top of her broom. Okay, I’d stop, but we weren’t done with that particular conversation. Might as well charge forward with my campaign to change her mind on helping with Bonnie. If she continued letting Bonnie think everything was fine, then Bonnie would only feel emboldened to use Expression more, and she had to stop . . . for her. For all of us. I also needed to convince Elena to tell me where Bonnie was, because wherever Bonnie was, the professor would also be. “And why would you think I should clean any of this anyway? I’m not the one who was willing to sacrifice Bonnie’s well-being for selfish reasons.”

Saying it slowly, like I was incapable of understanding it, Elena retorted, “You. Threw. A. Bomb. At. Her.”

“I threw it at myself!”

“What were you even doing with it?”

It was a new toy, so why not have it if I was going into a situation where I was provoking a response from someone with an unstoppable power, but it didn’t matter why I had it. “If being nicer doesn’t work, push her, so she can see why she has a problem’ – you words, not mine, and remind me again who was left covered in blood? Oh, yeah, that’s right. It was me! . . . Unfortunately, none of it seems to have worked. She should be flipping through this.” I held up the leather-bound book that Caroline had tried to give Bonnie last night. “Or asking Alice about how to be cleansed of Expression . . . You know, basically trying to save her own life. Instead, she’s still running around with Darth Sidious and giving him another chance to lie to her.”

“That’s not what she’s doing.”

“Then where is she?” Suddenly, sweeping became much more important as Elena shrugged and focused on that. “I mean this really is her mess as much as it is yours, so she should be helping, no?” I got another dirty look before she snatched up a dustpan to gather the pile of glass she’d swept. “All right then, how about some light reading to pass the time?”

Balancing the bowl to the side of me, I flipped the book open to the page I needed. “Oh, would you look at that . . . It’s already marked by a Post-it note tab and everything, so it’s super easy to find, and in case that wasn’t enough, the most important bits have been underlined in pencil. _Though it has been attempted, there is no way to truly control Expression. Once accessed, its manifestation is linked to a witch’s will, and as such, can be used without a witch’s conscious knowledge. Because the use of Expression is not bound by the constraints of other forms of magic, there are, in essence, no rules, and that makes it a powerful, albeit chaotic power that is generally not accepted by practitioners of magic as magic. There is some evidence to support this notion as no witch has the ability to harness it indefinitely without the inevitable conclusion being death. In contrast, more traditional methods of magic have been known to allow witches to live well into their 100s._ ”

I glanced at Elena, and she’d stopped to listen. “It really says all that.”

“With some Latin tossed in, but yeah, that’s what it says . . . I mean, that’s not all it says, it is a book on magic written by something of an underground Aleister Crowley of his day, so the section on Expression is relatively small, but I highlighted the most important part – the one that says in black and white that she will lose control over it and die.”

Rolling her eyes, Elena left her cleaning supplies where they were and came over to take the book from me. After she scanned through the passage, her eyes narrowed before focusing on me. “Okay, how do you get that from -

“ _Mortem_ means death. _Orcorum tenebrarum_ means chaotic. _Voluntas_ means will. The rest is there in plain Early Modern English.” She gave me a dubious look, and I understood her not knowing a dead language. I’d only developed a decent vocabulary of Latin words after years of reading these kinds of texts, but she should be able to understand the rest if she really wanted to do it. “It’s not like we’re talking Chaucer here. Think Shakespeare.” She handed the book back to me without a second look and went back to her pile of debris. “So what if I paraphrased? The gist is there if you care to look, but that doesn’t matter, does it? You’re just going to continue being intentionally blind about it, because I’m the one saying it, and it doesn’t fit into this narrative you have that sees you and Bonnie getting what you both want. You need to wake up before your best friend dies from this.”

With a derisive snort, she shook her head as she went back to scooping up the debris on the floor. “Like you actually care what happens to her.”

As she dumped the contents of the dustpan into a garbage bag next to her, I retorted, “I find it disturbing that I seem to care more than you do.”

“Do you, or do you just want to prove you’re right? You didn’t see how happy she was that she could do a couple of small spells again, but then you had to go and ruin it.”

“Ruin it?! If there’s even a chance I’m right, then you should be taking it seriously.”

“Why? All you want is for me to say I’m okay with you killing Shane, and I’m not.”

“I already know what I’m going to do with the Snake whether you give me your stamp of approval or not. This is about _your_ priorities. You aren’t even really thinking about what’s best for Jeremy. There’s what you want and nothing else matters.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

_Take a slow breath to stay calm. Return to cereal._ “It means you being a vampire has really amplified how selfish you are deep down, Elena.”

She waited until I’d shoveled a bite into my mouth before saying, “No, I mean about Jeremy. What would be best for him?” Uh oh. I slowly chewed my food, and she quickly asked, “Are you saying that it’d be better for him if I was out of his life?”

At this moment in time? Yes, absolutely. “I think advocating for a mad professor to mess around with his brain is wrong, and you’re only saying you want that, because it’s what would be best for you.” Silence filled the room, and I sighed before swallowing and shaking my head at the bowl in my hands. “My plan would be for him to get used to me being around him without knowing for sure whether I’m you or me, so he can be trained out of his immediate feelings of hate at the sight of you. I’d have to wear the contacts and all. No half-measures. He needs to really think I’m you, and then I’ll show him that I'm not. You come in every once in a while pretending to be me, then show him you’re really you. It might take some time to re-wire the damage this mark is doing to his brain, but it’s the safest option I can think of right now.”

“So, you agree that something needs to be done.”

Couldn’t deny that. “Yeah, especially since I think the reason that Caroline or Tyler or even Stefan and Damon can be in the same room with him is because his hunter’s mark wants him to kill you first . . . Once you’re out of the way, it all goes downhill from there. Every other vampire will be a million times easier after that . . . If he kills you, even by accident, then he really will be lost and no better than Connor was. He’ll be a killing machine and nothing else.”

“Spoken like someone who knows what that’s like.”

“Oh come on!” I knew she’d been serious about the ‘stay away from Jeremy’ portion of her rant last night. “I haven’t exactly sugar-coated the life I’ve led, and I was a decent enough person for you to ask me to train you, but now with him, I’m suddenly not, and it started before last night, because before that, you were worried I was going to be too rough on him . . . I strongly suspect it has more to do with you being afraid that I’m going to replace you with him now that he hates you, which is just ridiculous. He was raised with you. You’re his sister, and I will never see him as a brother. Never. He’s my cousin, and I’ve only just met him.”

With a sharp breath, she came around to the front of the couch facing mine and sat on it before saying, “In fairness, you’ve only just met me too.”

“And?”

“And, that hasn’t stopped you from wanting to be my sister."

"Because I am your sister!"

"Okay, I get that, but if he turns to you every time he gets mad at me, then - " Cutting herself off, she took a calming breath before trying again. "Eve, he's all I have. I don’t want to lose him.”

“To the hunter’s mark or me?”

“Anything.”

I rolled my eyes. “Are you saying he should never get married?”

“What? No, of course he should. I want him to have the best life possible.”

“Then you’d better get used to sharing his attention.” She looked a little stuck, because she’d never really had a problem with him giving his attention to other people, and yet she did now. “You just don’t want to have to share that attention with me. You like the relationships you have with the people you care about the way those relationships are or for them to strengthen, but I disrupt that.”

She thought about denying it and then finally rested her elbows on her knees with a sigh, “So could you not?”

“Elena, without him being properly trained, you’re going to lose him to death much sooner than if he died when he was 90, because this is his life now.”

“Well, if he needs to be trained, and it has to be by you, then can you just wait?”

“For what?”

“For Shane to make it so Jeremy doesn’t want to stake me whenever I walk into the room.”

“What about my idea?!”

“I think it’s as likely to make him hate you as it is to make him not hate me.”

She made a good point, although I was a little loathe to admit it. “So, we work on it until we get the formula right. What did I tell you the first time we trained? If you want control over your life, there are no short cuts, and that goes for Jeremy too. Why would you entrust your brother’s mind with that guy?”

“Because Bonnie thinks he can help.”

“But Bonnie’s read on this guy is all wrong! If you don’t want go with my plan because you’re too insecure to try it, or even if you genuinely think it won’t work, then find someone else who can do what _Shane_ does. There are plenty of other people out there who probably can. You just have to take the time to properly vet them first.” Another brief moment of hesitation on her part, and I shook my head before taking my last bite of cereal. “It’s too late, isn’t it? You’ve already handed him over to the guy for at least today, so that ship has sailed . . . Maybe you’re right. Maybe the Snake wants to ingratiate himself with you lot so much that he won’t do anything nefarious, and you will get what you want, but I guarantee that it will be at the expense of Bonnie, because she’s only going to trust him more. My job is to not fall for his scam, so he might help you, but he’s going to get a whole different kind of response from me than he will from you even if it works.”

Picking up my bowl, I brought it with me as I went to the kitchen, and she followed me. “What do you mean by that?”

“I’m not going to let him bring on an apocalypse just so you can show gratitude for him doing something you want when him doing what you want is part of the mask he’s using to hide his real intentions.”

“I didn’t even think to ask . . . Did it work . . . with Hayley?”

Meaning had Hayley confirmed that the professor was really up to something? Elena's priorities needed some work if that was only occurring to her now. Careful not to touch the water as I rinsed my bowl, I answered, “Yeah, you did well on that part of the night. I mean, I could tell she was holding a lot back, but she told me enough.”

“Like what?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Her shoulders fell as she watched me start drying the bowl. “Let me guess. You’re not going to tell me.”

“Nope.”

“As a penalty for telling Bonnie that she was walking into an ambush?”

Putting the bowl into a cupboard, I answered, “Now that you mention it.”

Her eyes were narrowed in thought as I turned to face her. “But I don’t think you’re that upset about it. I’m not even sure that you’re having me clean the living room to have me make it up to you. You’re just too lazy to do it yourself.”

“Well, I am of the opinion that if I am paying to have those windows replaced, then the least you can do is clean up the mess, so there’s that.”

“Yeah, okay, I get it, but . . . I guess what I’m trying to say is you’re not blanking me or yelling. You’re just not angry, and I want to know why.”

With a shrug as I leaned back against the cabinets, I considered the best answer. I suppose if I had to dig into it, then my opinion would be, “I am irritated that the Gilbert twins couldn’t even team up to fight the good fight for one night, but I guess I’m not angry about it, because you are so far down the list of people that I trust that I wasn’t all that surprised by it.”

My words seemed to hurt her more than I’d intended. Bowing her head, she heaved a sigh before saying, “I thought maybe you were trying to overcome the curse, but it’s because you still don’t trust me?”

I had been trying very hard since she’d moved in here not to let disagreements trigger my anger and hence my curse, but that’s not what I was doing now. There was next to no effort involved in this on my part. “I trust you more than Stefan. He isn’t on my list at all. Does that count?”

She shook her head, more in frustration with herself than me, before chancing a glance in my direction. “So, there’s an actual list?”

“There seems to be . . . since I came back from Hell anyway. I think it took going through that for me to understand what being able to trust someone really is and to accept that it’s okay to trust the right people, whereas before, I had a difficult time knowing who that should be outside of my parents and as a result didn’t really give my complete trust to anyone. It’s still a work in progress, but on something like this . . . You did a great job on helping with Hayley and a terrible job of helping with Bonnie, and I guess I must not have been that surprised by it.”

“Because you don’t trust me.”

Was I just supposed to hand trust over for no reason? Instead of saying that, I tried a different approach. “What I’m saying is that if you felt that last night was more like an ambush or lying or manipulation instead of helping them, then you were probably willing to do any one of those things to Hayley, because you don’t care about her, but you do care about Bonnie, so on some level, I must've expected you to have a difficult time doing the intervention with her, and if I thought it was going to be difficult for you, then it wouldn't be wildly surprising for you not to do it at all. Where I'm having a problem is . . . “

“What?”

“Okay, look, I would have expected you to want Bonnie to keep doing what makes her happy if you don’t believe there’s a huge risk to her doing that, but at least part of the reason you are willing to continue putting her in harm’s way is to get something you want.”

“Are you saying you’re disappointed in me?”

Uh. Yeah. “I expect more from you where she’s concerned.” Apparently, the idea of disappointing people really upset her. Her eyes started getting a little watery. “She’s lost a lot for you. I’m not saying you haven’t lost a lot too, but what have you really lost for her, specifically?“ 

Her bottom lip started to tremble, and if it should make me feel bad or want to stop, it didn’t. She’d really fucked up, and someone around here had to hold her to account. "I know I have a ways to go when it comes to knowing what is right and what is wrong, so as much as I want to comment on that, I probably shouldn’t. One thing I do understand though is responsibility. Once you committed on the intervention idea, you had a responsibility to see it through. Maybe nothing would’ve changed, but as Bonnie’s best friend, you were our best shot, so now this thing is going to escalate. Who knows what the consequences of that will be, but whatever they are, you’re gonna have to live with them.” Rolling my eyes, I grabbed some paper towel and handed it to her saying, “And stop crying. Just do the right thing, and you’ll have nothing to cry about.”

Dabbing her eyes, she asked, “You really think it might kill her?”

“Yes!” She did a double take at my exasperated response, and I paused before calmly adding, “But it’s not the end of the world yet, so that’s probably another reason I’m not that angry, because it means there’s time to fix your mistake.”

“You may not seem angry, but every other thing out of your mouth tells me that you are holding this against me.”

It was just something I did. People around here seemed to expect you to get over things as soon as they thought you should, which was pretty much as soon as they’d done something to piss you off, and I was an absolute champ at bottling things up, so I did get over things without really getting over them. It meant I could talk and interact with people without being angry, while still being disappointed in them and holding on to wrongs they’d committed until I just didn’t anymore. “Well, I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing.”

“Are we going to be able to get past this?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You’re not exactly instilling me with much confidence.”

“Why would I do that? You have plenty of confidence without me giving you some of mine to boost yours more.”

With a heavy sigh, she said, “You know what I meant.”

“Yeah. You want me to make you feel better about being a selfish back stabber.”

“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about! You act one way and say something that’s the opposite. It’s really confusing. Am I still on that list or not?”

I’d never intended for this list of mine to be used by anyone other than me, but the idea of it was really getting to her, and that was entertaining to me. “I said you were. I mean, you might’ve dropped down a spot, but you’re there.”

“I dropped a spot?”

“Yeah. You’re on the last rung - the one just before you fall off the list completely.”

“You can’t knock me down a place for doing what you thought I would. At worst, I should stay where I was.” The list might be a way for me to work out who I trusted, how much, and why, but where people were placed on it was entirely subjective, and she couldn’t dictate where she was on my list. If I thought she should drop a spot for screwing me over, then she should drop a spot, whether or not the betrayal upset me or was expected. I exhaled a laugh, and she quickly snapped, “This isn’t funny.”

“Fine, you can drop a spot, and I’ll add an empty space below that, so you can stay just above the last one. Feel better?”

She hesitated before she shook her head. “Not really . . . It wasn’t supposed to be like this . . . If I ever had a sister, it was supposed to be . . . I don’t know . . . not this.”

“Tea parties and the like?”

“Maybe . . . I don’t know. A best friend? Someone who didn’t keep anything from me.”

“And who you didn’t keep anything from either, right?” She shrugged a shoulder, and I rolled my eyes. “So only as an afterthought. Even with your fantasy sister, you’re a black hole that expects everything to go your way without giving the same in return. You know if the way you treat your surrogate sister, Bonnie, is anything to go by, then why - “

Her hand quickly flew up to clamp down over my mouth. “Stop . . . just stop. I should’ve talked it over with you if I didn’t agree with your plan instead of going behind your back . . . I’m sorry, okay?”

There was a brief moment of hesitation before she removed her hand, and I immediately asked, “How sorry?”


	35. Looking Back

I opened the front door with a couple of books under one arm and a black umbrella in my hand after finally convincing Elena to tell me where Bonnie and Jeremy were. She was insisting on coming along, and I couldn’t be in two places at once, so I could do with her assistance as long as her assistance didn’t include screwing me over again. At least this time, I had a contingency plan that I could use if that did happen.

I noted an unidentified car in the drive. The person who drove it there must have been sitting inside trying to work up the courage to come to the house, because by opening the door, I seemed to have prompted her to get out of her car and give it a try, but we were on something of a schedule, so we didn’t really have time for this. “Hi!”

Incredibly insecure and yet bubbly. I took pity on the insecurity she was attempting to mask along with the fact that she was an orphan, and instead of sending her away, called to Elena over my shoulder. “Hey, Elena! Your friend is here.”

As she approached the door, April corrected my assumption. “I, um . . . this is really awkward, but um, I’m here to see you, actually.”

She finished it off with a smile as Elena came up beside me. “Hi, April . . . Is everything okay?”

Looking between us, April stammered, “Wow. You two really do look the same.”

She exhaled a nervous laugh, and my eyebrow ticked up at what was quickly becoming an annoying intrusion into my morning. Glancing back at Elena, I grumbled, “We’re gonna have to talk about dying your hair back to normal.”

Touching her ponytail, Elena whispered, “Why? I kind of like it.”

I liked it too. That’s why I didn’t want to change it. “Yeah, well, maybe I’ll get a totally different haircut this time.”

“It’s just because we both have our hair up. You should leave it the way it is. It’s cute shoulder length.”

April cleared her throat, and my attention turned back to her. “There are differences if you look hard enough. What’d you need, April?”

“Right. I, um . . . See my friend, Rebekah – “

Friend? I immediately relaxed with a smile. “You’re the friend she was talking about.”

“Yeah, I guess. I just . . . have you seen her? She said she’d help me with something. We were actually going to come over here to do it, but then she just dropped off the face of the Earth, and I thought . . . maybe you might’ve heard from her? I’m worried.”

Before I could respond, Elena nudged my elbow. I looked back at her, and then she tilted her head in the direction of the road. I didn’t see them yet, but it would appear that our window to get out of here was closing. If she could hear Damon’s car, and it was close enough for her to identify it as Damon’s car, then it was too close. Time to go.

It’s not that I didn’t want to see Damon. I just wanted to be gone before he got here. I could say that it was because I didn’t want him to see that I was up to something and try to stop me, which was partially true. It would also be partially true to say that the lone wolf in me was hearing the call of the wild, and I had a strong urge to do this one on my own without him, but the single greatest reason I had for not wanting to see him yet was that I didn’t want to hear the bad news he had regarding the sire bond if it was anything like what was in that book I’d found in Mom’s lock up. Grabbing my sunglasses out of my jacket pocket, I slid them on and reached back to tug Elena forward as I close the door behind her saying, “I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have, April, but we were on our way out. Why don’t you come back tomorrow morning, and we can talk then?”

She watched Elena and I shuffle past her, but we briefly paused when she blurted out, “Well, what are you doing? Maybe I could come along too.”

I found April’s determination admirable. She was timid and yet still bold enough to invite herself along. If we were normal teenagers, that’d be fine, because we’d be doing normal teenage things, but we weren’t. That she didn’t know that didn’t diminish that what she’d done was brave in a way. It took a lot to put yourself out there like that, especially when it went against your nature, and if she had courage in any kind of way, then I saw it as a good thing, but I also saw it as something that might get her killed if she didn’t know the real dangers involved in knocking on the wrong door and showing that kind of gumption.

Ignoring whatever excuse Elena was conjuring, I reiterated, “Come back tomorrow morning, and I’ll answer any questions you have.”

Elena pulled me away from her saying, “Yeah, we’ll see if we can figure out where Rebekah went. I’m sure it’s nothing serious.”

Extracting my arm from her grip, I planted my feet and turned in April’s direction. “I’ll make us brunch, and then I will be the one talking to you.”

Elena jumped in with, “Not without me, you’re not,” and I shot her a look.

“I think I can handle talking to her by myself. At least, she’ll get the truth from me.”

With a frustrated expression, Elena grabbed my arm again and pulled me towards my car. Looking over her shoulder with a small wave, she quickly smiled. “Eve's sick, and we have a doctor's appointment to go to now. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

It was around that time that I saw Damon’s car pull into the drive. Deciding to halt the argument, I quickly got into the driver’s side of my car, and Elena must’ve taken my lack of response as capitulation on my part, because as soon as she got into the passenger seat, she said, “I’ll call her tonight and tell her we have to cancel because you aren’t feeling well.”

She watched April get into her car, but my eyes were glued to Damon’s car as it headed for its normal spot. “Absolutely not. She needs to know the truth about everything.”

The boys got out of the car as April pulled away, and I turned my key in the ignition before Elena asked, “What do you mean?”

Damon and Stefan were looking at us I put the car into gear, and instead of answering, I said, “Smile and wave.” 

We did it at the same time, and I knew it’d be obvious that we were trying to avoid them, but when they went into their house and saw the windowless living room, they’d hopefully chalk us going out for the day up to that. I’d also called the window repair people in town, and they should come by to start work this afternoon, which would add credence to the idea that Elena and I had made ourselves scarce until it was fixed. If that failed to keep the Salvatore's from speculating about our business, then I’d arranged for the final two invitations to be delivered to them for the vampire convention tomorrow night. They might think we were getting ready for that on top of staying away from the scene of the crime. Alice certainly was. She’d gone into town to meet Caroline earlier to finish shopping so Elena and I could have some space. I was sure we were covered.

Stefan and Damon shared a look over the top of Damon's car, Damon muttered something, and then they returned their own phony synchronized wave. Affronted, I sat back in my seat. “They’re up to something.”

“So are we. Let’s just go.” Yeah, but I knew what we were doing. I had no idea what they were doing, and that was a little worrying. They could be at best, annoying, and at worst, detrimental, to everyone around them when they were on the same team. On the other hand, if they were occupied, they’d stay out of our way, so with some minor reluctance, I took off, and as we approached the end of the drive, I rolled my window down an inch. “Do you have your phone?”

Pulling it out of her pocket, she answered, “Yeah, why?” and I snatched it out of her hand before dropping it out the window. “Hey! Why’d you – “

“Because you’re Damon’s snitch right now, that’s why, and I’m not going fast, so as long as it doesn’t rain, it should be fine when we get back.” After looking in both directions, I pulled out onto the road adding, “And what I was saying is that April should know that her Dad was under the Professor’s thrall when he blew up that farmhouse, so it wasn’t really her Dad’s fault. She should also know what happened to Rebekah. She needs to know what vampires are, and – “

“No. We can tell her about Shane if it means letting her know her Dad wasn’t responsible for it, but we aren’t telling her about vampires.”

Where was this ‘we’ coming from all of a sudden? “Why shouldn’t she know?”

“Explain to me how you’re fine with keeping secrets from me when it suits you, but now all of sudden it’s important to ruin her life by telling her the ‘truth’ for some reason.”

“For starters, I keep secrets from everyone, not just you. I just particularly relish in not telling you things, because it annoys you so much, but I also know when secrets need to be told, and this is one of those times.”

“It’s not safe.”

“For who? For you or for her, because I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but despite the pity victory she had at Miss Mystic Falls, she’s an outcast. The only people around her in any real way are vampires, who either disappear on her or are always brushing her off because they don’t want her to know what’s going on around here; Jeremy, who is a supernatural vampire hunter now; or Matt, who is as involved in all of this as a person can be. I hardly think that she’s going to run around telling everyone not in the know the truth, especially if you spin it the right way, but even if she did, the Sheriff AND the Mayor are both in on the cover up, so it’s in their best interest along with their children’s best interest to dissuade her from making those kinds of claims in public.”

Sitting back in her seat with a huff, Elena started to put on her seat belt as she grumbled, “You know what I meant. It’s safer for her if she doesn’t know.”

“Seriously?!” I got an annoyed, “Seriously,” back from her, and quickly said, “Then tell me in your numerous attempts to keep this from people when that has been true? Did keeping Caroline out of the loop make her safe, or is she a vampire now? Did Bonnie not knowing keep her safe? Oh no, wait, the way she found out was when Damon tried to bite her throat out. Maybe Jeremy? No, he learned about them on his own, because vampires were around him, in large part, due to you, and look at where his path led him. What about Jenna? If you’d told her about them from the start, then maybe Katherine would’ve never gotten her tentacles into her, and . . . “

Actually, Jenna did know about vampires when she died, so it wouldn’t have protected her from that. It probably wasn’t the best example I could use. “And what?”

I hazarded a quick glance at Elena and then went back focusing on the road. “And she wouldn’t have stabbed herself and ended up in the hospital.”

“Why don’t you say what you’re really thinking? If she knew about vampires, then she wouldn’t have died. You think that’s my fault, don’t you?”

Definitely not a good example to use. I didn’t know how much anyone else had said to her about it, but she and I hadn’t actually discussed Jenna apart from the time she accused me of teaming up with Katherine to make sure Jenna was in the sacrifice instead of me. “I actually don’t. I think it was a combination of Katherine knowing how to pull on her heartstrings by pretending to be you needing help and Klaus being sadistic at the time.”

“But if she’d known, then she – “

“She did know.”

“No, I never told her about – “

“I did.” The silence after that would’ve been deafening were it not for the rumble of the engine. A quick glimpse told me she was processing that, rapidly coming to her own conclusions, and I was going to be in big trouble if I didn’t add more to it than that. “I wasn’t pretending to be you. I mean, I did at first, but then Damon told her who I was, and I had to tell her something when she found my cupboard of weapons, so I told her I was a vampire hunter and used Damon as a prop to show her that vampires were real. I told her about Katherine. Then Katherine showed up, which really just helped to prove everything I’d said, because it was clear that Katherine wasn’t you . . . Maybe if Jenna hadn’t been angry about being lied to for so long, she might’ve talked to you about it, and you two could’ve come up with a code word to use so she would’ve known it wasn’t you on the phone that day, but that didn't happen. To be honest, I'm not even sure that would've happened if she hadn't been angry. It's what I would've done if she was already targeted by Katherine once, but not everyone thinks like me.”

“She knew about you?”

“Not before that night.” More silence and another glance said I needed to say more than that. “I asked her not to tell you about me. I told her that I was finishing out the school year where I was and then Dad and I were supposed to move here, but I didn’t want you to know until it was a done deal in case Dad changed his mind . . . In reality, I just wanted her to keep my secret until I was dead and wouldn’t have to deal with it . . . Anyway, she said it was my decision on whether or not to tell you, but the longer lies build up, the harder they are to forgive . . . I thought about that a lot when things were at their worst between you and I, and I’m sure that what I said was right - you did feel like I was trying to supplant you in the lives of the people you know - but I’m also pretty sure she was right too. If secrets and lies are hard to forgive when they build up like that with someone you know, then they must be nigh on impossible to forgive with someone you don’t.”

There was another gap in our conversation, but this time it looked like she was just trying to process what I’d said without working herself up into a righteous anger, so I left her to it until she finally came out with, “Are you apologizing for not telling me about you sooner?”

“Just thinking out loud.” More silence, and I could feel the glare on the side of my head, so with a sigh, I said, “I probably would have if you hadn’t slapped me at Dad’s funeral.” I felt the glare wither and then die.

“You shouldn’t have said what you did about my parents.”

“You forget that your parents knew my Dad was your Dad and must’ve felt threatened by that, because they knew that what they did to adopt you was illegal. They probably thought he’d take you away from them or tell you the truth someday, so they really weren’t the nicest to him, which definitely had an impact on how you saw him, and you shouldn’t have said that the funeral was stupid. I did not want him in an unmarked grave at the cemetery with other peoples’ tombstones commemorating that they’d lived and died while he got nothing. He liked the idea of a Viking funeral, but I also thought of burning him as setting him free and that if vampires, who live hundreds of years, were present, the memory of a non-conventional funeral that would've stood out in their time, let alone in this day and age, would last a lot longer than some tombstones do.”

Again, there was a long pause, and she said, “That is kind of beautiful in way.”

“I thought so.”

“I’m sorry for ruining it.”

“Well . . . I still had personal reasons for not wanting you to know about me that are valid to me, and it was necessary for my plan even if that plan failed, so I’m not sorry for doing it, but I’ll consider apologizing for making you feel the way you did about it. If I did it now, it wouldn’t sound genuine, more of a tit for tat.”

“That’s as close as I’m going to get to one, isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Do you want me to drive?”

“I’m okay for now. It’s pretty cloudy.”

Settling into her seat, Elena got a little more comfortable before saying, “So, Aunt Jenna was mad at me . . . when you told her about vampires?”

“Yeah. She said she was going to wait for you to come to her with it before she talked to you about it . . . Like it was a test of some kind to see how long you’d keep it going.”

“So, every time I told her I was going to see Stefan – “

“She knew that he was a vampire, and it probably made her angrier, because she knew you were probably doing something vampire-related.” She was quiet, and I added, “But the second she thought you were in trouble, she dropped everything to come help you, so it didn’t make her love you any less . . . if that helps.”

“Not really. That’s what got her killed.” I decided to leave it at that, but a few minutes later, Elena said, “How much did you tell her . . . about vampires, I mean?”

“That they were real, that they could compel you to do what they want, about Katherine being the reason she stabbed herself, and about how Katherine compelled her to spy on you – she was horrified that she’d done that without knowing - about vervain and how the reason Katherine was able to get into your house to switch out the vervain you’d given to Jenna was because Jenna invited her in thinking she was you. About Elijah and how we’d just daggered him, because he was a vampire, and she was mortified that she’d let him into the house too.”

“So, she knew since when . . . the time Stefan and I went to the lake house and Damon had that dinner party for Elijah?”

“Yep.”

“Damon said that John helped, but Stefan said there's no way John would've passed up an opportunity to kill Damon, especially when John's the one who gave him the knife in the first place. He thought it was probably Damon's secret hunter friend, but Damon stuck with his story, and when I talked to John about it, he backed it up. I guess Stefan was right."

"See, you did know about me long before you ever saw me."

"Yeah, but . . . I don't know. I guess I have a hard time reconciling the speculation we had then with who we got instead. Back then, it was just a mystery, an innocuous one that Stefan was worried about, because he'd come across hunters, but I mostly thought that if you were helping us every so often, you couldn't be that bad."

"You liked the legend better than the reality."

"What? No . . . I guess I just pictured someone different . . . blonde, tall, older, not another duplicate of me."

Awkward, but okay. "Technically, I was born first, so you're really the duplicate . . . and Katherine was born first too, so you're her duplicate too."

Elena snorted before directing her gaze out the side window. "Not to me." A couple minutes later, she added, "You know, I didn't even know Jenna was at that dinner party until now. John kept it from me. Damon kept it from me. She kept it from me . . . Do you think that’s why she acted so strange when Isobel showed up at our door the last time she was in town?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. How did she act?”

“I can’t explain it. I know Isobel said she was my birth mom, and I could understand Jenna being surprised by that, but I guess I just would've expected her to maybe invite Isobel in to talk or something, and she did pretty much the opposite by trying to slam the door in her face. I was so worried that Isobel was going to take it the wrong way and do something to hurt her, and it almost seemed like Jenna tried to block me when I went to go around her to talk to Isobel, but I wasn’t sure if that’s what she did. She definitely didn't seem happy that I invited Isobel in the way Isobel wanted either. She wouldn't leave me alone with her even when I said I'd be okay.”

“Well then yeah, that's definitely why she was acting out of character. Before you came into the room, she might’ve tested Mom in some way when she opened the door, like with her vervain perfume or trying to get her to cross the threshold without inviting her into the house. Can’t be easy to pretend like you don’t know about vampires while trying to get a vampire away from the door. I'm a little surprised she didn't tell you then that she knew vampires were real to keep you from letting another one into the house, but maybe you invited Mom in before she could, and after that, if she’d let you know that she knew what Mom was, then it would’ve led to a talk I’m not sure she was ready to have with you. It would've been a conversation made even more difficult, because she’d been keeping that she knew about vampires a secret from you too, so she’d lost the moral high ground somewhat, and knowing you, you probably would have used that to flip it around on her.”

"I don't think - "

"Did you get in trouble after you wrecked your car and disappeared for a day, or did you throw the fact that she knew you were adopted in her face and stay angry with her until she gave you whatever info she had on Mom?" When Elena glared at me, I shrugged and said, "Have I mentioned how good my parabolic listening device is?"

Her shoulders fell as she looked away from me again. "What did you think of her?”

“Of Jenna?” Elena nodded, and I said, “I thought she had a messed up social life that I heard way too much about when she was getting drunk on wine and still thought I was you.” Elena smiled, so I continued, “And I thought she was young – way too young to have the responsibility of taking care of you two. She was in over her head before she knew about vampires, but she was also pretty strong. She let Katherine know what she thought of her even though Katherine scared her, and she took the vampire news pretty well. After the initial shock, Damon didn’t scare her. She mostly felt stupid, because she thought she should’ve seen through the lies sooner, and she knew that she was the one who was supposed to be protecting you and Jeremy, not the other way around. She was rightfully indignant that you thought keeping it from her made her safe, because whether she knew about it or not, she was already mixed up in all of it.”

“Was she really, or are you just saying that because you want to convince me that we should tell April?”

“Yeah, no, she really was upset about it. She got a little shout-y, and what is with all this ‘we’ talk. You don’t have to be a part of it. I can talk to April myself.”

“I don’t think we should tell April, but if we do, then . . . maybe you could use me as a prop this time.”

We shared a brief look, and I went back to watching the road. That was almost like a conditional, ‘okay, but if we tell her, we’re doing it my way,’ or that’s the way I took it. Maybe she just needed a little more convincing, so she wouldn’t sabotage it the way she had last night. “And if we don’t tell April, and she waltzes up to Klaus’s door looking for Rebekah? How do you think that’s going to go for her if she doesn’t know why she shouldn’t do that?”

“Point taken.”

“Really?”

When I looked at her, she was still hesitant. “I’m just not sure. It feels like it’s safer if she doesn’t know.”

“Or maybe you felt safer when you didn’t know, and you haven’t felt safe since, so you’re transferring that over to the people around you, because you don’t want them to feel unsafe, the way you do, but feeling safe is miles away from actually being safe.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah?”

She gave me a slight nod. “Yeah, we’ll tell her . . . tomorrow, and you can teach me how to make brunch.”

“We can make waffles if you want?” That made her smile, and I finally flicked on the radio. Maybe this road trip wouldn’t be so bad. I just hoped I’d feel okay enough tomorrow morning to follow through on all of that.


	36. Hard Truths

Elena and I had swapped seats the closer we got to the lake house. The sun had decided to make an appearance, so I’d needed to cover my head with a blanket I had stashed in the backseat, but I’d also wanted to set up this scenario to see what happened. As we’d made our way down the drive, I’d thrown the blanket back where I'd gotten it and had quickly fixed my hair. Now you really couldn’t tell with the glint on the windows which one of us was which, or at least Jeremy couldn’t. Both our eyes were glued to Elena’s brother as she haphazardly handed me back the keys and reached for her door handle, but before she opened it, I whispered, “Wait.”

“This is exactly why I wanted to use your phone to call Bonnie and let her know we were almost here.”

“I’m pretty sure Bonnie would’ve ushered the Professor out of the house if she knew I was coming before we got here, and Jeremy thinking I’m you is by design. I want to see what happens.”

“No, just give me your phone, so I can text Bonnie and ask her to come get him.”

Jeremy did resemble an attack dog at the moment. He was holding an axe, and the look on his face wasn’t promising. I hadn’t actually seen him since Stefan made him kill that second vampire, but the look of a hardened killer was definitely there in his eyes. It was a look that was completely unearned. Unless a person had been mutilating kittens or had life beat it into them from an early age, humans didn’t get such a pronounced look after two kills, especially when they'd either been coerced into killing or had done it to protect a sibling. He’d had a privileged upbringing; no kitten mutilations to speak of either. It was that look more than the muscles that had sprouted up over the last two weeks that really reminded me that he was as supernatural as his sister now, and I was the only human left in the Gilbert family. That was a sobering thought.

“Enjoy the fact that he assumes I’m you and isn’t looking at you that way, and give me a chance to talk him down first.” I flicked her a look and asked, “You remember our training sessions?” She nodded, and I opened my door saying, “Good. Something tells me you might need them today. Stay here for a sec.”

As I got out of the car holding one of my books, his eyes followed my every move. I closed the door behind me before he finally said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I'm not here to cause problems, Jer.” Now, he definitely thought I was Elena. I’d used just the right amount of a whine to make it sound like I was hurt he’d say that to me. I let his assumption sink in for another second or two and then a slow grin spread across my face before I added, “But my Dad did give me part-ownership of this place, so I have as much right to be here as you do.” The more I said, the more he relaxed. His attention darted from me to Elena, back to me, and then finally landed on Elena. His confusion over the mistaken identity hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds, but the temporary short-circuit I’d just witnessed was something I thought we could build on going forward if Elena and Bonnie’s plan didn’t work. “Stop looking at your sister that way.”

His attention instantly came back to me. “That thing’s not my sister.”

“Technically, she is, and she isn’t. I’ll give you that.” Before he could argue, I added, “It’s not smart to telegraph your intent the way you are. It gives your opponents plenty of time to know they need to defend themselves.” He relaxed somewhat, like he didn’t think that was the worst advice in the world, and I tried, “But maybe what you really want is for her to know she needs to defend herself, because deep down you’re fighting this.”

“I’ve got nothing to fight. I just see things more clearly now.”

“Do you? Because when I look at you, all I see is a supernatural threat every bit as dangerous as the other monsters I hunt.”

With an uncertain snort, the more naïve Jeremy I knew re-surfaced. “Wait, are you saying you’d hunt me?”

“In my book, the only thing keeping you from being another Connor is that you haven’t killed your sister yet, but if that happens, then you’ll no longer be you . . . You’ll be using orphans as bait before you know it, and I can’t allow that.” Briefly glancing at the house behind him, I added, “So, I might not agree with the methods used today, but you’d better put your all in on rectifying this in any way possible, or you can let that mark of yours know you won’t be killing anymore vampires for it.” I smirked as another look I recognized crossed his face. He was sizing me up. “You can try it. I mean you are stronger and faster now, but you have no experience, and you’ll never be able to out-smart me, so my advice would be to deescalate the situation by putting the axe down and backing away. Let Elena get out of the car, so we can get this show on the road, and when all this is said and done, I’ll train you to be the best hunter that you can be."

He actually managed to make himself put the head of the axe on the ground, but dropping it completely? He didn’t do that until he heard Bonnie say his name as she approached him from the direction of the house, and it wasn’t until she touched his arm to get his attention that he actually backed away from us. I watched the two of them go back to the house as Elena got out, but at the sight of the professor coming out of my personal sanctuary, I got a little pissed off. It felt like a violation of some kind. Stepping up beside me, Elena muttered, “You might want to take your own advice. You have what you want to do to Shane written all over your face right now."

"I doubt that. Anger is not the same as a look of intent. You need to learn the difference if you want to survive without overreacting to every little pissy look someone gives you."

"Did you have to threaten, Jer?”

Yep. I’d needed to put him in his place, and I’d mostly been talking to the mark, because that is what was corrupting him, but I found her objection to it humorous. “It wasn’t a threat per se. I simply told he and his mark what would happen if he killed you.”

“Are you saying you meant it?” As Jeremy, Bonnie, and the professor made their way back inside, I finally glanced at Elena, but before I could respond, she quickly said, “Eve, no matter what happens. You can’t kill him.”

Who said anything about killing him? I might just lock him up in the basement at the boarding house and have vampires serve him all his meals. Maybe then the first thing he'd think when he saw vampires wouldn’t be, ‘kill.’ It’d be ‘I’m hungry,’ and while he was salivating over the prospect of a well-made meal, vampires would have the time they needed to get away from him – no more vampire deaths to feed to his mark. Or I’d follow him everywhere he went and either kill or spare any vampire he was about to kill – no more vampire deaths to feed to his mark. Pretty much any one of a thousand things I could think of to prevent him from ever killing another vampire were on the list of options above killing him, but was I going to say that to Elena? Nope. “I’m not taking anything off the table when it comes to dealing with him. I have no idea how violent he’s going to be with this.”

“He’s your family, but if that isn’t enough to keep you from murdering him, then do it for me.”

“You mean in memory of you, right, because we’re actually talking about what’ll happen when your brother kills you.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. In the event that he kills me, I want you to save him, not just say he’s a lost cause and kill him. He's your cousin, Eve.”

“You don’t want him to be family to me until you’re dead. Is that what you’re saying?”

“What? No.”

“Then make up your mind, would ya? You can either use the family ties that bind us to make me spare him or continue telling me not to get too close to him because you’re afraid he might like me better, not both.”

At my smug smirk, her shoulders fell, and she huffed a heavy sigh. “You’re teasing me to make a point, aren’t you?” She shook her head and looked away from me for the briefest of moments before giving me a faux-glare that held no heat. “All right fine . . . I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure this works, so he doesn’t kill me, and then you can be the ‘cool’ cousin who trains him. Just make sure you don’t hurt him.”

“Back on that one, are we?”

Bringing her hands up to study her cuticles, she shrugged. “It’s the one I’m most concerned about now that I’m not completely sure you won’t think that killing him is an option.” She chanced a look at me to see what my response was, but I gave nothing away, and she let her hands drop to her sides before focusing on the lake house. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Stepping in the direction of cabin, I felt the need to warn her. “He took a stake with him.”

Walking with me, she argued, “It was a piece of wood.”

“Are you seriously going to argue semantics with me right now? Your brother picked up a sliver, chip, splinter of firewood approximately stake-sized, stuck it down the back of his pants, and took it with him to use on you when he thinks your guard is down.” When I shot her a look, she was the one openly smirking now. She was screwing with me, and apparently, she found my response as entertaining as I usually found hers. “Sure, laugh it up, but never forget that it doesn’t matter how small it is or how well made – it could be a stick, a bullet, or a piece shrapnel – if it’s made of wood, then all it takes is one puncture to the heart, and you’re dead.”

Her smirk quickly fell. “You weren’t kidding earlier, were you? Now that I’ve broken up with Stefan, you want to take over on helping me be a vampire.”

“Someone needs to do it, and I don’t necessarily agree with the way he was doing it anyway.”

“Then why didn’t you say anything?”

“I guess I just figured an actual vampire might know more tricks, but he's a ripper, so he sees the world through a ripper-lens.”

“You really think I should try human blood?”

“I think you should learn self-control and be as strong as you can be mentally and physically, because it’s a dangerous world. You’re already a baby vampire, why hobble yourself more than necessary? And do you really like chasing down poor defenseless animals in the woods?”

“Not really . . . but I don’t want to hurt people either.”

“You think that now, but when you’re around human blood, your nature is taking control of your brain, so you will hurt someone or possibly kill them because you don’t know how to keep that craving in check. I’m not saying you need to bite people to feed, just use a blood bag. You’ve never even allowed yourself to have a drop of the human stuff other than the time you bit Connor, so it’s like this added temptation to something that’s already tempting, because you are denying yourself the one thing you should be eating, and that’s only going to make you want it more.”

“Do you think that’s what’s wrong with Stefan?”

“I think Stefan has a lot of problems, not just that, but every time he falls off the wagon, he literally bites people’s heads off.”

“Did you see him do that . . . last summer?” I glanced at her, and she stopped walking as she said, “You’ve never gone into it . . . All you said was that his bad side was bad.”

This was different than her wanting me to tattle on her ex-boyfriend. She wanted to know, because she had to know what she might be like at her worst now - how bad it could get if she didn’t learn control. “In Chicago, he told you that he’d left a trail of bodies. He wasn’t lying. The number of news stories and police reports that we found were only a fraction of the victims that he actually killed. They were just the ones that he or Klaus didn’t bother compelling someone else to hide, and Stefan is vicious when he feeds . . . You only caught a glimpse of what he’s like when he killed those kids in the gym. Compelled or not, he toned it down in your presence, or they would’ve wound up headless. I call him the Doll Maker because if Klaus wasn’t around to see him do it, then after he bit their heads off, he felt bad, tried to put them back together, and posed them so they still looked alive. He turned them into corpse dolls . . . That’s proper serial killer shit, Elena.”

“But Klaus made him – “

“Are you kidding me? Klaus may have lit the match, but Stefan's the one who let the fire get out of control. The only reason he didn’t kill more people over the summer was because Klaus had things to do and wouldn’t let him feed all the time. If Stefan drained people dry several times a day, he didn’t decapitate them, but if he missed a feeding or god forbid a day, then he’d gnaw through the next neck he had. The only reason he toned it down even a bit in my presence was Klaus. A day or two after I joined them, I stopped Stefan from killing a little girl. She couldn’t have been more than 6, but it wouldn’t have mattered to him . . . Remember when I told you that he killed that migrant village? What did I say? He killed every – “

Realization dawned on her, as she said, “Man, woman, and _child_.”

“Yeah, so you can be sure that he would’ve killed that little girl if he’d been left to his own devices. After I shot him, I ranted at Klaus, and he started putting some effort in on getting Stefan under control . . . At the time, I didn’t know him very well, but now that I know him a little better, I’m not sure Klaus would’ve allowed him to kill her even if I hadn’t been there. Probably would’ve clapped Stefan on the shoulder and made a joke about it while he turned Stefan away from her and then compelled her to forget about what happened to her Mom and Aunt. I just don’t think he’d cross that line. In a fit of rage, he might slaughter a village too, but if there are little, little kids? I think if he didn’t leave them crying and wallowing around in the blood of the dead adults and teenagers, their deaths would be quick and painless. He definitely wouldn’t feed on one.”

Even for a vampire, Elena looked a little pale. “You think I could go after children?”

“I’m saying that Stefan has, so he might understand control, but he goes to such an extreme that it’s detrimental with time.”

“He helped Caroline.”

“He did on telling her how to control her urges, but he also didn’t watch her like a hawk to make sure she stayed on animals, so she was on blood bags after a couple of days, and he didn’t knock her for it. Ask yourself why he’s been so obsessed with you sticking to animals when blood bags are actually a lighter shade of grey. I mean, animals are easier prey than humans due to their limited cognitive abilities. Is that better or worse than sipping blood out of a bag?”

“He wants to make sure I don’t lose control.”

“Then he’s going about it all wrong.”

“He doesn’t like what I am now, does he?”

“I think there’s some truth to that, but that’s not it either.” Her face fell, like she hadn’t expected me to agree with her. “What? He definitely liked you the way you were as a human, which really begs the question of what exactly he was hoping to get from your relationship in the long run, but we’re getting away from the point: He feels responsible for you being what you are now, so he’s going overboard on trying to spare you the pain he feels, and he’s also projecting his short-comings onto you. You aren’t him, Elena. You’re you. You just need to find a way to make this work in a way you can accept. Drink from a blood bag if you want to drink from a blood bag. It’s not going to turn you into a blood-crazed monster, because you’re already a blood-crazed monster. What it will actually do is help you keep that blood-crazed part at bay when you’re around living, breathing, and sometimes bleeding human blood bags.”

“I suppose Rose did use blood bags.”

“Alice does too.”

Elena nodded, like she’d consider it, and I turned to head towards the house again when she exhaled another sigh and touched my arm to make me stop. “I’m not sure if I can do this.”

“Then we’ll try again and keep trying until we find something that works. You’ll get Jeremy back before you know it.”

“No, I mean – “ She cut herself off to look at the cabin before leaning closer as she whispered, “What you were saying about Shane . . . I think it’s wrong.”

Here we go. “I didn’t ask you to be involved. Just keep your mouth shut about it, and I’ll deal with him myself.”

Sticking her arm in front of me to keep me from moving forward, Elena tried again. “Will you wait?! I want to talk about this. Just tell me why you don’t think it’s wrong.”

In any other scenario it would be, but these were drastic times. “It might seem harsh, but this is actually the most humane option I have. At least it’s actually giving him a chance to reform.”

“There has to be another way.”

“Sure. I could kill him outright, but then Bonnie will see him as a martyr and use his death to keep doing what she’s doing.”

“Or . . . we could just talk to him and make him understand.”

“Elena, he’s already killed 12 people, and let’s not forget that he has been using Bonnie’s crush on him, her vulnerability when it comes to not being able to use magic, and the grief she feels for her grandmother to get her to do something that will kill her. Do you really think he’s going to stop voluntarily if we just have a word with him? Not in this lifetime.”

“But maybe if we knew why he wanted to raise this Silas, then we could – “

“I have a pretty good idea why, and no, we aren’t going to be able to change his mind by offering him our help instead.”

Leaning back and looking a little insulted because I’d dismissed her idea, Elena asked, “Is it one of the things Hayley told you last night?”

“No. I researched him after she left.” I’d researched a lot of different topics actually. To be honest, I’d had very little sleep before Elena came knocking this morning.

“Well, if you did, then it’s because you wanted to know what his motivation is too, so you could do the same thing I was thinking and offer him a deal of some kind. If you don’t think it’ll work, then tell me why.”

I suppose it wasn’t an unreasonable request. It’s not like I’d been intentionally withholding the information from her. I just hadn’t thought it would be relevant, but given that she always had to question why I did things, I probably should’ve expected it, and if she knew, then maybe she’d understand why I was right. “Did you know he had a wife and son?”

“Had?”

She clearly wanted to believe they’d just left him but knew that wasn’t what I’d meant. “I found his marriage license online, and since Liz was on the late shift, I called her up to see if she could find out more on his wife. She called me back a few hours later to tell me about the death certificates and the highlights of the M.E. reports.”

Elena tossed the house a sympathetic look and asked, “What does that have to do with Silas?“

Mom had a section in her lock up related to occult items or mythologies that had nothing to do with the Sun and Moon Ritual, vampires, werewolves, or witches. That section was more devoted to her enjoyment than topics relevant to the lives of her daughters. There were shelves and shelves of invaluable material there, so I’d gone to that section yesterday to see what I could find, and it was one of those books that I held up now saying, “One of the legends about Silas is that when he is raised, he’ll also raise the dead.”

“Shane wants to bring his family back.”

I nodded, and her sympathetic expression grew. “Let me remind you once again that he killed 12 people.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Uh, I do. What, do you want me to go in there and ask – “

“Yes!”

I needed to take a few seconds to stomp out the instant flash of anger I felt. Taking a deep breath, I calmly said, “Elena, be real. He isn’t going to admit that he bonded with Pastor Young over being a fellow widower and then used that bond to twist the guy’s mind, so he could sacrifice 12 people, and it was a sacrifice by the way. 12 is a very specific number. It’s important in numerology across all kinds of lore, and in this case, those 12 human souls were the start of something called an Expression Triangle.”

That resonated with her. “ _Expression_ Triangle?" I nodded, and she asked, "Are the council people dying how Bonnie is doing Expression now?”

“Not exactly, but she is tapping into the mystical energy created by their deaths without knowing that’s what she’s doing. It's like a powerful invisible battery that's giving her an extra boost.” She looked a little sickened by that, and I added, “Most witches who practice Expression only go as far as the first sacrifice, because just the completion of that is enough to consume a witch and kill her given enough time, and even if a witch wanted more power than that, I doubt more than a handful over the last several thousand years have even heard of an Expression Triangle, so they don’t know they can keep going, because it’s extremely obscure lore. I’m not even sure if one has been completed or if it’s just a myth, because the legends about anyone doing it are from long before the Originals were even created, so who the hell knows what they used as the demon part of the sacrifice if it wasn’t vampires . . . maybe werewolves or some other monster that’s gone extinct or maybe one that hides on the remotest places on the planet now?” 

Was I getting a little too excited about all of this from a purely academic standpoint? Yep. My Mom's collection had information that very few people had ever heard about in the history of magic. That was exciting, or at least it was to me, and from a hunting standpoint? There might be a new primordial monster out there for me to find, how could I not find that exciting? Trying to tone it down some, I added, “Anyway, even in the legend, it was done by a coven, not a single witch.” 

Elena finally seemed worried, so I decided to use that. Hopefully, if that worry turned into a mild case of fear, she wouldn’t try to stand in my way. “I think the reason he gave Bonnie spirit tea to-go was to help her control the power she’s getting from the first sacrifice when he’s not around. I mean it helps make you more suggestible to outside influence, but it also helps you center your psyche, which she needs to be able to do to keep Expression from getting away from her. Her powers will grow exponentially if he completes the second sacrifice, something he’s actively working on right now, and it’ll be worse still if he completes the third, but then he’s going to want to have her activate all three sites, so she can actively channel them to prepare the way for Silas to bring back the dead, and – “

“Why didn’t you say any of this last night?! You couldn’t have said more than – “

“He’s a bad man, and this is going to kill you? How many different ways am I supposed to say it? Caroline brought up the 12 council members, but Bonnie didn’t want to hear it, and then it all got derailed by the theatrics at the end.” Before she could feel too guilty about that, I added, “And I didn’t have it all figured out by then anyway. A lot of it I put together after Hayley left. When I asked her to confirm that an Expression sacrifice was why those 12 council members were killed, she clarified by asking me if I meant was it part of the Expression Triangle. I hadn’t seen the sacrifice of 12 human souls called that in what I’d read, so I told her that’s what I’d meant hoping she’d tell me more about it, and she said, ‘Then, yeah, it was probably the easiest part of the Triangle for him to complete, so he did that one first,’ and she didn’t go into it more than that, so I searched until I found something after she left. He’ll have to kill 24 more – 12 demons, i.e. monsters and 12 witches – to complete it.”

Glancing at the book I was holding, Elena asked, “All that’s in there?”

“Some of it . . . about how Silas will bring down the veil between the living and the dead, and the rest was in a book I left at home to keep it safe. All the books I brought back are ones Mom got after she became a vampire, so they’re all priceless, because she had a knack for finding books that were really special and compulsion to help her get them, but that book is beyond priceless, probably even more than Kol’s journal is, and - "

Reaching her hand out for the book I was holding, Elena asked, “Can I see it?” Had I been getting a little too enthusiastic again? It would appear so. I handed it to her, and she scanned the page, but since I doubted that she could read it, I think it was the drawing of Silas and what his second coming would mean to the world that really got her attention. After about a minute, she finally said, “All right, I’m in . . . just promise me that you’ll be okay.”

“Honestly, that’ll depend on you being able to get Imelda involved to make sure my plan works.”

“You threw my phone out the window, remember?”

I had, hadn’t I? “Use Jeremy’s phone . . . That might actually be an even better bet than using yours.”

“And if it still doesn’t work?”

“Then improvise, but whatever you do, don’t get Bonnie involved. The more she uses Expression, the stronger her powers get.”


	37. I'm Trusting You, Maybe

I was engrossed with reading my book of lore until I saw some rapid movement out of the corner of my eye. Shane must’ve slapped the table or something. Elena’s face had fallen, and Jeremy looked slightly bewildered. Must not have worked.

If they were done with this persuasion nonsense for now, I figured it was safe to remove my headphones and caught the tail end of Elena saying, “But what if we tried a variation of her idea? What if what we need to do is use a me who isn’t a vampire to get through the conditioned hate. If he knows she’s not a vampire, but she sounds like me and says stories I tell her to say from our childhood or something would that work?”

It definitely hadn't worked if she was willing to resort to even variations of my idea. From his crouching position behind Jeremy, the Snake put his hand on Jeremy’s shoulder in a display of sympathy before standing upright. “Maybe.” He cast a brief dubious look in my direction before adding, “Would she be up for that?”

Elena’s attention shot to me, and when she saw that I was listening, she quickly asked, “How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough to get the general gist.”

“So will you?” If I was busy doing that, then when was I going to have time to trap the Snake? “Please?”

At her plea, I sat up with a sigh and removed my feet from the table in front of me. “Well if it’s not something you, specifically, have to do, and anyone can, then why not use Bonnie?” It’d keep Bonnie occupied too, which would be a definite bonus, because she’d been watching me closely all day. “If what you’re trying to do is put a stop sign in his subconscious, so he can pause and think about whether he wants to hate the vampire in front of him and annihilate or go with the peace and love option, surely the stop sign should be created by someone he has more of an emotional connection to than he has with me, or it’ll get knocked down.” My attention flicked to Jeremy. “I mean no offense will be taken if you don’t exactly feel a strong bond with me or anything, but it should be someone you trust, and you have no real reason to trust me that much. Bonnie, on the other hand . . . “ I glanced at her before saying, “Has more of a reason not to trust you than the other way around.”

Dropping her hand and letting it slap her thigh in exasperation, Bonnie whined, “Eve, why do you always have to go out of your way to make everyone around you so uncomfortable.”

“Well, was what I said wrong?”

Before Bonnie could say anything, Jeremy sat forward a little as he looked at her. “She’s right. If it’s supposed to be a deeper connection, then – “ He gave me an appraising look before saying, “Yeah, I just don’t feel it. Eve’s someone I look up to, I guess. I mean, I want to learn from her, but – “ Turning his head to look at Bonnie, he explained, “I’ve known you my whole life. I know for sure that I trust you.”

“Plus, he still loves you or whatever if that wasn’t clear with the dopey look he gets on his face every time he looks at you, so if ‘love’ is supposed to be what creates this detour option, you are the woman for the job.”

Bonnie gasped again in frustration as she shot me a look. “God, Eve, get out.”

“But this is my house too.” As was demonstrated when I thought Jeremy took a little too long to invite Elena into the house and I did it for him.

“I don’t care. Go.”

Getting to her feet, Elena said, “I’ll take her outside.” After a brief hesitation she looked back at Bonnie and asked, “So, will you do it?” and Bonnie’s annoyed exterior melted.

“Yeah, I’ll try . . . Just keep her out of my sight until we’re done. I need to stay calm.”

With a little nod of thanks, Elena came over to grab my arm, pulled me out of my seat, and then dragged me towards the door. As soon as we were outside, I whispered, “Mission accomplished. That should keep her busy for a while.”

“You really are like this on purpose most of the time, aren’t you?”

“It does tend to give me what I want.”

She exhaled a laugh before rolling her eyes. “I guess you just have to be gutsy enough to say the things nobody wants to hear.”

“True.” It didn’t seem to be something everyone did. “And not care about other people’s feelings.”

“No, I think you care. You just weigh up the consequences of saying something and decide which would be worse; the other person having their feelings hurt or people dying because someone else won’t listen to you or do what you want - unless you’re hurt, and then you can be a little mean.”

“Or because I think it’s funny.”

The corner of her mouth turned up into a slight smirk, and she admitted, “You do have a way of finding other people’s discomfort a lot funnier than you should.” We went to the deck, and I found a wooden chair to lounge in while we waited for the right time. It’d gotten cloudy again, and the sun was starting to go down, so I was fairly comfortable out here. Taking a seat next to me, Elena said, “I meant to ask you when you were on your vacation . . . How did you know where this place was? Did Alec give you directions when he told you where Imelda was or had you been here before?”

“I used to come here with Dad when I was younger.” Looking out over the lake, I added, “I guess life and the distance Mom and I sometimes moved from here got in the way, but this is where I learned how to swim.”

“Did you ever think of leaving something behind, something to let me know you’d been here?” She suddenly got uncomfortable before backtracking. “Probably not if you had to stay a secret. I guess, it’s just something I might’ve done if I’d known my sister was going to be somewhere I was after I left.”

“You know the lines in there, the ones on the doorjamb to your room that marked your height? The first thing I used to do when we got through the door was go there to measure myself against them and make sure we were growing at the same speed, so I guess you did. You just didn’t know it.” 

That seemed to make her happy based on the grin she gave me. “And it explains why it annoyed you so much when I said you were shorter.”

I hadn’t really thought about it, but maybe. Inhaling deeply, I got to my feet saying, “I suppose there is something I left behind. Come on.”

I brought her out into the woods and found one of the trees I used to put bullseyes on for target practice. I found the holes that the bolts from my crossbow had left. Moss and time might’ve weathered them, but you could feel them with your hand. “These were from target practice.” As Elena reached forward to touch them, I added, “There are trees all over these woods with the same types of dents and holes, some are a lot lower to the ground, because they would’ve been about my height when I was first learning, and some are really high from after I got better. Some are from stakes and they’re probably a lot bigger, but a lot of them are like this from one of my crossbows. You just wouldn’t notice them if you didn’t know to look.”

The revelation appeared to make her little teary. “It makes it seem so much more real. I've always thought of this place as our family home . . . You really have been part of my life a lot longer than I ever knew.”

“I keep saying that.”

“I know this is just . . . “

“Proof?”

Turning away from the tree, she looked out at our surroundings, like she was seeing them with a fresh pair of eyes. “I can almost picture it . . . you out here, running around, shooting trees . . . the same trees I used to read or write under.”

“So a bunch of holes in trees are better than a coin I pulled out of my pocket or an old sock?”

She nodded before tearing up a little more and then lunged forward to pull me into a tight hug. “It’s exactly what I needed. Thank you.”

I awkwardly patted her on the back a couple of times before saying, “Okay . . . all right . . . that’s enough of that. You tugging on my arm to pull me all over the place is bad enough without throwing hugs into the mix.”

Finally taking the hint, Elena pulled back. “I don’t do that.”

“Uh, yes, you do, and it’s starting to feel a little like you think I’m some giant teddy bear that you can carry around with you. What’s that gonna do for my credibility as a fearsome hunter?” Her laugh was cut short as she looked over my shoulder. When I scanned the area behind me to see what was the matter, there was Professor Snake walking out onto the dock. “If you don’t want to do this, then I can do it on my own.” 

“No, you’re right. Somebody needs to do something . . . I’ve been listening to his heart, and he is scared of you.”

“I suppose he should be; all things considered.”

“But it really only starts to jump whenever you’re about to say something, like he’s afraid of what you’re going to say. I think that means he is hiding something, and if what he’s hiding leads to Bonnie getting hurt or worse, then I have to do everything I can to keep that from happening.”

Yeah that, and you know, keeping him from destroying the world was pretty important too, but Bonnie is what had gotten her to come this far, and if the small picture worked better than the big picture for her, then I was going to continue using it. “Better if she’s mad now than dead later.”

“You’ll definitely meet me tonight, right?”

If I had to crawl, I’d be there. “Yeah, just don’t forget Imelda.”

“About that. I don’t think it’d hurt if you tried her too.”

“Hey, I tried to get in touch with her the first day or so after I came back and got nothing. Then she ran off when we finally did find her. I’m not going to beg her for her help.”

“So, you want me to do it instead?”

“Yes.” Elena snorted, and I added, “She likes you better.”

“Maybe she did, but . . . I don’t think that’s the case anymore. Just promise you’ll try too – for me.”

“Stop asking me to do things for you. If I want to do them, I’ll do them.”

“Okay, then do it for you. You’re the one who is going to need her.”

I grumbled, “I’ll think about it,” and that seemed good enough for her. “And in case I need to spell it out for you, I’m trusting you on this. I’m not asking for perfection. Very few plans ever work out at that way. All I want is for you to be on my side from start to finish. Can you handle that?”

Squaring her shoulders in a way that reminded me of Mom, she gave a curt nod before focusing more on the pier. “I can. I will . . . But you have to let me do the talking.”

I was fine with that. I needed to go back to fading into the background, so it was less noticeable that I was there. She was the star of the show. I was only coming in for the big finale at the end. While she went over to strike up a conversation with the professor on the pier, I did handstands and front or back handsprings on the grass just off the pier. Nothing to see here, just a cheerleader practicing.

I did a roundoff back handspring that’d make Caroline proud and briefly flicked a look in Elena’s direction. I’m not sure why. Maybe I just wanted to know if she’d seen it. She must not have. She was paying attention to the Snake, and she was looking awfully solemn.

Straining my ears I moved a couple steps closer, went into a handstand so I could do something that didn’t require a whole lot of concentration while listening in on them, and then promptly heard something that reminded me that maybe Elena wasn’t the best person to get involved in this. “It sounds like maybe you know something about that . . . what it’s like to love someone too much.”

Whatever he’d said to make her say that, she already knew he’d lost his family, so she could pretend like she didn’t to get him to talk more – maybe to get him to trust her enough to fill her in on his plan – but it’s also an area where she could relate, which meant she’d have sympathy and doubts if the two of them connected much more. I muttered, “What do you think, Alec? Should I drop her?” under my breath. If he’d been hanging out with me and not spying on someone else in town last night, I’d gone through my options on what to do about the professor and told him to let Jeremy know if he had issues with what I was thinking, but I hadn’t heard a peep yet. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure if Jeremy could see him right now. Maybe the Hunter's Mark clouded his ability to do that.

Either way, it didn’t really matter if it was him not hearing me or Jeremy not hearing him. I hadn’t heard anything back, and that meant that I was going to go full-steam ahead on what I thought was a decent plan, but one with troublesome unknowns in it, and I was going to do it with or without Elena’s help. By the time I’d dropped back down to my feet, the professor had glanced in my direction and promptly dodged Elena’s question in case I overheard. Instead of telling her about his dead family, he decided to educate her on another who loved too much – Silas.

Elena’s mouth drew into a thin line, like she was frustrated, and maybe it’s because she’d given him a chance to tell her the truth, but he didn’t take it. If he had told her about his family just now and used it as an opportunity to bond with her, I guarantee she would’ve called the whole thing off. Instead, she locked him in on a path that would be his undoing. “I missed your occult exhibit at the school, but I heard you talked about him. I’d like to know more.”

Forget the lectures about witch history and forget about vampires and werewolves too. Silas was his real passion. It went beyond him just wanting to free Silas so he could get his family back. He really was a fan, a true believer, so much so that for possibly the first time today, he wasn’t consciously or subconsciously aware of where I was or what I was doing, so he didn’t notice me following them from a distance on their way back to the house. On the way there, he broke off from Elena and went in the direction of his car while Elena went into the house. Either she’d told him now was a good time to go, or he was heading in that direction for some other reason. I thought it was probably the latter. Diverting my path to maintain my view of him, I went to the deck to get the book I’d left there and casually watched him pop the trunk.

He didn’t seem like a weapons kind of guy. He might use herbs against someone, but he didn’t like to get his hands dirty. He’d rather turn people into mindless minions to get what he wanted. Bet he lugged all kinds of books and trinkets that were related to Silas with him everywhere he went. It was probably one of those, but I was still going to keep an eye out for anything suspicious he might bring to this mini-lecture on his idol.

Walking through the door, I quickly scanned the living room looking for Elena and only saw Jeremy and Bonnie doing their thing. I didn’t want to be late to the party because I’d wasted time searching the whole house for her, so it was lucky that I happened to cast a cursory look up the stairs in time to see Elena’s head pop around the corner. She waved for me to follow, so I guess we were doing this up there. When I got to the top of the stairs, she quickly told me that he was getting something that he wanted to show her from his car. “Will him looking at whatever it is be enough?”

“I don’t know what it is, so I don’t know.” Handing her the book, I added, “I think the picture in this would be better.”

Taking it, she nodded, like she’d find a way to work it into the conversation, and after that, I only had time to claim the chair next to the fireplace before he was ascending the stairs. Sitting there was an important choice, albeit an uncomfortable one for me because someone had lit the fire. Me sitting there prevented him from being able to sit there, and it was a place where his back would’ve been protected by the corner of the room. I didn’t want him sitting next to Elena on the sofa either, because then he’d see me coming, so as she was sitting, I waved her to the left a little to make sure she was exactly in the middle of the sofa opposite the fireplace and surreptitiously nodded in the direction of some of the big pillows, so she’d put them on either side of her just as he got a step from the top.

If he noticed our intentional placement, he didn’t show it as he went exactly where I needed him to be and kneeled at the coffee table in front of Elena. As he unraveled his showpiece, I sat at the edge of my seat, like I was interested in what it was, so I’d be in a position not to make noise if and when I got up from the old chair, although I don’t think he was even aware of me such was his enthusiasm for a big rock. Well, that certainly wouldn’t do for our purposes. Blah, blah, blah, Silas was a witch who loved a girl and wanted to be with her forever, so what did he do? He went and made himself immortal, and that brought up something I hadn’t considered, but it also made a lot of sense when I heard it.

The cure everyone was chasing down now was a part of this Silas myth, and Jeremy’s tattoo? That would create a map to Silas and the cure, but it would also have the spell to release Silas when it was complete. I’d already suspected that this guy was the puppet master, who had been coordinating the events in and around Mystic Falls for the last while, but with his Silas story, I became absolutely convinced of it. He apparently didn’t need the map, because he’d been to where Silas was, but he did need the spell, so what I thought must’ve happened was that in his quest to free Silas, he’d researched his way to Connor, one of The Five. Mystic Falls was a notorious hot spot for vampires, so he when he met Pastor Young, he kept in touch with him, waiting for information from his unwitting, inside man, on the vampire situation in town. 

When Pastor Young phoned to tell him that the town was infested with vampires after Alec’s Dad informed the Council about them, the Snake sent Connor to Mystic Falls to complete his tattoo for the spell. Knowing that he needed to eliminate the Vampire Hating Council in Mystic Falls as competition for Connor, the Snake also used it as an opportunity to complete the first sacrifice of The Expression Triangle. Then thinking that he was about to get his spell from a completed tattoo, the Snake got to work on procuring the Bennet witch he needed to perform the spell, and who better than the granddaughter of his old mentor, who also happened to live in Mystic Falls? Then Elena went and killed Connor. That’s why Professor Snake was so keen to help with Jeremy. It wasn’t just to get in good with Bonnie and Elena. He needed Jeremy.

In my mind, his little story solidified that what we were doing was right, but for Elena, I think it had a different effect. I saw her noticeably pause when he mentioned the cure. It’s the first time I really had any obvious confirmation that she wanted it, and what she was hearing right now was that this guy could help her get it. She glanced at me, and I shook my head. She’d better not blow this. If she wanted the cure that bad, she could work with Klaus the way Stefan was, and I would figure out a way to be there to stop them from raising Silas, but in this moment, we had a guy in our snare whose only goal was to raise Silas. He was the bigger threat right now to Bonnie, to Jeremy, to the world.

Exhaling a breath that she’d been holding, Elena looked at him. “Wow, that’s a lot to take in.” I was already thinking of ways to intervene and salvage this, but a few moments later, she added, “This book I found after Bonnie told me about the exhibit paints such a different picture.” She cleared her throat uncomfortably as she reached under the pillows to bring out the book, and as soon as she handed it to him, I slowly stood in his blind spot, while he flicked it open to the section on Silas.

Standing gave me a better view over his shoulder, so I could see what he was seeing. After a few brief moments, he chuckled, and because he was a super fan who didn’t believe in the bad hype, I was pretty sure that he was looking at the picture, but I needed to know with absolute certainty. A moment later, that’s what I got. Showing respect for the age of the book and not wanting to damage it with the oil on his fingertips, he let his finger hover just above the full-paged picture, and I didn’t want him to have even half a second to glance in my sister’s direction, so whatever argument he was going to make about how the book had Silas all wrong, he didn’t get to say it. I’d already begun thinking, _The price to bring him back is a dead man,”_ on a loop from the time I stood. It was probably the most important part of my plan, so it’s a mantra I continued as I silently stepped forward and quickly snapped his neck.

While I laid his lifeless body on the ground and took my book back from his grubby hands, Elena got to her feet and harshly whispered, “You thought I was going to let you down, didn’t you?”

“The thought may have crossed my mind once or twice.”

As I stood and looked in her direction, she rushed out a concerned, “Anything?”

I had killed him with my bare hands, so it was a valid concern. It’s one I had myself, because I had no idea how this was going to affect my curse. I just knew that I’d like for him to see multiple abysmal futures about Silas, so he could learn a lesson about raising the immortal being, which is what I’d told Elena, or failing that, less ideal futures of what was going to happen to that book. Either way, his memory would be wiped, and that was the ultimate goal. 

Re-programming 101. If he lost the memories that were motivating him to do what he was doing, then it was a sure-fire way to make him change his mind. Seeing how bad a freed Silas would be on top of that would really just be the icing on the cake. “I don’t know. I think I’m okay for now.” Stepping forward, Elena went to grab my arm, like she was ready to flee with me, and I yanked it away from her. “Hey, don’t touch.” I had thought ‘dead man,’ but I’m guessing the curse wouldn’t be too picky on gender as long as it got its soul.

“Sorry, I forgot.” Hurrying to the other side of the room she added, “But we both know that you might get worse the longer he’s dead, so you need to go. I’ll need time to calm Bonnie down, but I’ll be there.”

She unlatched the window. I ducked through it and swung my leg out before stopping when what she’d said hit me. I thought I was supposed to be getting a head start, so I could dig up that grave while she hid Shane’s body in Shane’s car, moved the car, saw if persuasion had worked with Jeremy, and then drove Shane’s car to where I was, or that’s what we’d agreed she’d be doing. “She’s not supposed to find out, so why would you need time to calm her down?”

“I think she’s going to notice him being dead, Eve. It’s better if I tell her before she finds him like this.”

“What happened to you moving his car, and when she looks for him to say good night, telling her that he already left?” She didn’t answer, and I sighed. “You’re not going to do that, because you want to use her as a backup witch in case you can’t find Imelda.” She didn’t immediately respond to that either. “Elena, I told you that I don't want her involved and why. Find Imelda or another witch. I gave you Aja’s number.”

“But she lives hours away.”

“She might know someone closer.”

“Isn’t she the one you think might kill you if she sees you like this?” I shrugged a shoulder. “Won’t anyone she knows be the same? I’ll figure something out. Just go. You’re really starting to look more pale that usual . . . I knew this was a bad idea.”

“If it’s such a bad idea, then why were you on board with it?”

“Because you seemed so sure about it, and I don’t know . . . I wanted to make up for last night, but now – “

“Now what? Nothing has changed.”

“Yes, it has!” I waited for her to explain, and she finally said, “Today’s been a good day. _We’ve_ had a good day.”

What the hell was she talking about? “All I’ve done is bitch at you all day.”

“No, you’ve said things I needed to hear. There’s a difference.”

She was making excuses for me being an asshole to her most of the day? It was a very unexpected, and frankly, unwanted turn of events. She wanted to be sisters now, didn’t she? The problem was that I’d already decided to go my own way. If Damon didn’t come back with better news than I found in some of my research last night, then the only known way to break the sire bond would be for Damon to set Elena free by telling her that he wanted her to live her own life without him and then either send her away or leave, but Mystic Falls was the only town she’d ever known, so she should stay here as long as she wanted . . . within reason. She’d have to leave some day because people would start to ask questions about her not aging, but for now, it’s where she should be for the most stability, and in that case, then I suppose I’d finally made my choice.

I chose myself by choosing Damon, and I thought that probably meant that I was growing as a person. I could always come back to visit without him, but if I stayed here for her and let him go without me, then he might as well be dead to me, and why should I put myself through that, especially since the thought of spending whatever years I had left with my twin wasn’t all that appealing given what I’d get for it in return. More nights like last night? No thanks. I’d rather be with him. 

That’s not to say that I didn’t have a few things I wanted to get done first, namely training Jeremy, making sure that she was going to be okay as a vampire, and stopping everyone from freeing Silas. I knew that by preventing them from finding that old witch, I was denying my sister a chance at a human life, but it was the right thing to do for the greater good. I still wasn’t getting my moment of pure altruism though, because the last thing I wanted was for all the monsters I’d killed to roam free. It’d completely undo my entire life’s work, and I’d killed them for a reason. They should stay dead.

I’d also have to do something about Klaus. I’d have to make sure that he didn’t go after anyone in retaliation for anything I did, and he might, because as long as the cure was out there somewhere, it was something that would gnaw away at him in the back of his mind, the way it must’ve done for the last 900 years, but if I succeeded in making it impossible for anyone to get the cure, he might just lose all interest in Mystic Falls and leave. Then I could leave Elena and Mystic Falls with a clear conscience, or that’s what I’d been thinking, but here she was unintentionally trying to pull me back into her web. “One day, does not a relationship make, Elena.”

“I know that, and I know I screwed up last night . . . but before I did that things were starting to get better, and the fact that we could do anything together today proves that.” 

“Or it proves that without Damon around, you feel less of a sibling rivalry and can actually stand being in close proximity to me.” 

Heaving a frustrated sigh, she briefly shook her head. “Is that really what you think of me?” I honestly wasn’t sure, so I didn’t respond, and her expression became more stubborn, “Look, you did what you had to do, and I understand that, but if I can’t find Imelda, then I’m going to do what I have to do, and you’re just going to have to deal with it. Anyway, you told me to have your back from to start to finish, so I will, whether it’s the way you want me to do it or not.”

Our heads snapped in the direction of the stairs when we heard Jeremy call up. “Everything all right up there? You two aren’t fighting again, are you?”

Elena quickly looked at me and pointed outside. “She’s with him. Go.”

Huffing out a frustrated sigh, I looked at the drop I’d have to make and shook my head. “Fine. Just know that if you get her involved, I’m gonna be pissed.”

“Better if you’re mad now than dead later.”

She really did love throwing my own words back at me. “Let’s see if you still think that when I’m kicking your ass. We’re supposed to be helping her, not making her worse.” I swung my other leg out, turned to face the house, and held onto the windowsill as I elongated my body to make the fall shorter. Letting go, it wasn’t even half a second before I landed. I had time to register that I’d scraped my hand on a splinter on my way out, the blood seemed a little darker than it should be, but it was night now, so maybe that was why, and then I heard the sound of Bonnie yelling. That probably was as good a time as any to go.

I sprinted to my car, started it, threw it in reverse and was a good ways back down the lane way before I saw the front door swing open. Looking over my shoulder to make sure I didn’t plow into a tree, I pushed the accelerator down to get out of whatever range her powers had to keep me there as fast as possible and made it to the road before I felt confident enough to breathe a sigh of relief. It wasn’t until I was another mile or two away before I reached for my phone. Hitting Imelda’s number, I decided to leave a message when she didn’t answer. “Hey, Imelda, it's me . . . Eve. I, uh . . . I think I might’ve just done the smartest or the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. Either way, I could use your help . . . as a friend . . . or you know, if you want to call to chat sometime . . . I’d be up for that too. Bye.”


	38. Timing Is Everything

Shivering against a chill that I’d begun to feel at some point on the drive between the lake house and Mystic Falls, I tightened my jacket around me before renewing my efforts to stave off the cold _I love Damon. Damon loves me._ What was happening was no giant mystery. The curse was digging its claws into me and burrowing itself internally.

I mean it had already done that with my anger, probably because that was an easier door for it to open with my temper, but now the cold was making itself at home, because I’d given it the strength to do it by activating the curse with a simple snap of a neck. I looked down at the dried blood on the palm of my hand again. Guess you could say that even the 5th level had managed to get a stronger foothold, since my nice normal red blood now appeared black. Thankfully, I wasn’t angry right now, but the freezing was a problem, because my internal body temperature could only go so low before I died. 

Everything should go back to normal as long as I saw my plan through, so that’s what I was doing – digging up a grave and freezing my ass off, while I waited for my sister and Imelda to meet me. Jeremy hadn’t driven, so I wondered if she’d stolen the professor’s car or if she’d gotten a lift from Bonnie, or if Bonnie was like, ‘Hell no. You’re not taking his car, and you can find a way to get there yourself,’ and Elena had to then vampire zoom her way here. It was taking a while. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe it meant she’d found Imelda or was at least looking.

With a deep breath, I grabbed the shovel, stomped it into the ground, lifted the dirt I’d managed to pile onto it and haphazardly threw it to the side before doing it again. “What do you think, Alec? What are the odds that Bonnie just made Elena explode . . . I think they’re probably pretty low, but maybe I should’ve stayed. I’m the one who really understands what I’m trying to accomplish here . . . but I'm done talking and explaining and waiting around for people to get with the program. It's a waste of time, and I had a grave to dig. What's it say when digging is a more productive use of your time than reason and logic . . . but even this is taking time. Time, I don't have. Couldn’t risk someone finding the corpse and handing him over to the morgue, or I would’ve dug him up before we left. Maybe I should have. I’m freakin’ freezing, and that’s making this take way longer.”

I shook my head as another thought occurred to me. “What do you think is up with the others? Maybe you know, because you’re not here at all, and you’ve been following them all day, but I’m going to talk to you anyway. I think Caroline was way too cool about it when I called and said I might not make it to the Winter Wonderland event tonight. We never got much of a chance to practice our song, so maybe it’s like she said, and she’d rather do it when it was perfect anyway, but I don’t know . . . She’s a quick learner, and she’s the one who suggested it in the first place, so I think she really wanted to do it . . . I mean, I felt bad for letting her down, so maybe she was just trying to make me feel better about it, but I’ve got a bad feeling that whatever Stefan and Damon were planning, they somehow roped her in on it. Everything bad in this town seems to happen on nights like tonight . . . You’d think the town would maybe want to tone it down some on all the social events, but they never do.“

I paused in the middle of getting another shovel-full of dirt when I realized that just talking to him made me feel a little better. I suppose my ‘I love Damon’ mantra could only go so far until I started to get side-tracked. If Damon was here right now, then I’d feel less cold just seeing him, but he wasn’t here, and if I talked to him now, I knew he couldn’t hear me, but with me talking out loud to the only other person I trusted completely, it helped that I at least had hope that he was listening. I think I needed that. 

Stomping the shovel a little deeper, I continued, “Hey, I just realized . . . by me stopping this Silas resurrection, I’m kinda fucking you over, aren’t I? I mean, it would be one way for you to come back . . . Not sure if I should apologize for that now or wait to see if I can actually stop it from happening first. I don’t really think that witnessing the future will make the professor be able to change that future, and I don’t want to know anything he sees, because knowing the future seems to make you unintentionally play into its hands. I kind of glossed over it last night, and I didn’t tell Elena this today, but what I’m hoping this future quest does is knock the memories out of his head that are motivating him to bring this Silas guy back. Can’t want to raise the dead if you don’t remember the dead you want to raise, right? I suppose he might get bits and pieces, like he’ll remember Bonnie when he sees her and know that he was helping her with her Expression . . . Hopefully he doesn’t remember why . . . might have to do something to make sure his memories are as limited as possible. Keeping her away from him would’ve been a lot easier if she didn’t know he temporarily died. Maybe I should break into his house and steal his photos of his family or something . . . at least until the threat is gone and Bonnie is returned to normal, because I think no Bennett witch means no Silas . . . Is all of that wrong?” 

I paused to see if I got any sign that he might think it was, and when I didn’t get it shrugged before I carried on with digging. “It probably isn’t very nice, but I didn’t kill him permanently, and at least, I’m trying to make sure that he’ll still get to see his family in the afterlife and not get stuck in Hell . . . I’m actually putting myself at risk to see to that despite all the bad things he’s already done, so I think it evens out . . . Anyway, I’m fine for now . . . as you can see . . . well you can if you’re not spying in town or hanging around Jeremy . . . but if you knew where I was going when I left the lake house, because you heard even a little of what I said last night, then I’m thinkin’ maybe you’re here right now.”

Looking around at the woods and shadows, I muttered, “Suppose if I was anyone else, I might be freaked out by that, and don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you hanging around when I’m with Damon if you know what I mean, or indisposed in some other way, and I don’t think I’d like it much if you started ratting me out to Jeremy so he can tell everyone else what I’m doing, but uh, I mostly think it’s kind of nice, being out in woods away from all the noise before everything goes to hell as it is want to do around here, digging up a grave at night with my ghost brother around here somewhere listening to me ramble on . . . seems like my kind of calm. Can’t say it’s normal though, even for me.”

I got another shovel-full thrown and dipped down to examined what seemed like some cloth. Must've gotten his leg. “Sorry, Connor, might’ve gone a little deep . . . you know, if you’re hangin’ around too. Nothing personal. It’s just your dead body, so you’re not attached to it, and I’m guessing you’ll get over it. It smells awful by the way . . . I’ve smelled worse bodies though if that helps, but it’s been a while . . . since I moved here actually . . . If I’d had my choice I would’ve burned you, but that reeks too . . . I would’ve burned you and walked far enough away that I didn’t to deal with the smell . . . or while you were still fresh, I think I would’ve hauled you to some abandoned mines. They’re so much easier, and I’m a little lazy when it comes to body disposal. And if you were still here, you could’ve helped with that, Alec.”

Using my hands, I pushed the rest of the dirt off of Connor and then stepped up out of the grave. Sitting along the edge, I looked from the corpse out into the woods to see if I could hear my sister yet. Nope. Nothing. Lucky that my phone rang around then, because I was running out of things to say. “Hey.”

_”Hi . . . Eve? This is Hayley.”_

“Hi Hayley . . . I’m still looking into it, and I think I might have a lead.”

_”Oh . . . really?”_

“Yeah, I spent most of last night researching a whole lot of things. Why?”

_”You wanna maybe tell me what this lead is?”_

“Just as soon as I’m sure it’s legit. Wouldn’t want my intel to be faulty and send you on what I can only assume would be another in a long line of goose chases.”

_”You didn’t have to – “_

Uh oh. Was she about to screw me over already? We’d only brokered a truce last night. “Sure I did. I said I would.”

She sighed and then finally said, _“I don’t know what your sister was talking about. You really are likable, you know that?”_

She definitely was about to make my night worse, wasn’t she? “Debatable . . . So tell me. How have you screwed me over?”

I heard her sigh again. _”I haven’t.”_ ”

I highly doubted that. She was more sure that she’d get the results she wanted from the professor than she was that she’d get them from me. It sort of made sense from her perspective. She’d been working with him for longer, and she may have had enough doubt that this Silas guy even existed to chance it. “Okay, then what’s the real reason for the call?”

_”I heard something today that I thought you might want to know.”_

“And?”

_”And I know where Rebekah is._

Interesting. “Why would you think I’d be interested in that?”

_”Oh, I don’t know. It might have something to do with all the people I heard saying, ‘Don’t tell, Eve.’_

Hm. Is this what the others had been doing? Why would they have to keep where Rebekah was from me? ”Where is she?”

_”Some old outpost on Tyler’s estate. I’m guessing you know the place better than I do, so that might mean something to you.”_

My senses went into overdrive as I reassessed my surroundings, and I couldn’t help but exhale a silent laugh before trying to keep the humor out of my voice as I said, “I don’t know, Hayley, I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.”

_“It’s your choice, but they’re moving her soon, and you won’t find her again.”_

So I had to be in a certain place by a certain time, or her plans would fall through? Got it. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

_“No, why?”_

“So, you’re telling me that the ambush for the second sacrifice is where I am right now?” Her silence spoke volumes. “Vampires or werewolves?” _Please be werewolves. Please be werewolves._ Either way, I couldn’t let myself be killed, because the only way to fix the mess Bonnie had made of me last night if I wanted to be ready for a busy day today was to take a few of Damon’s blood capsules, and I did not want to become a vampire tonight, but if the monsters heading this way were vampires, I couldn’t touch and/or kill any of them before I got this curse situation fixed. The vampire’s soul would not only go straight to Hell no matter what kind of vampire it was, but there’d also be no reversing what I did tonight and the curse was without a doubt going to kill me if that happened . . . again, with vampire blood in my system. I was an enemy to both species, so either was as likely as the other if I was the bait being used to draw them to this spot, but I really needed them to be werewolves, so I could at least get by with killing 11 here before driving one somewhere else to kill it.

_“What do you think, Eve?“_

Okay, so I got why Klaus might find that annoying when I said that to him. “I’ll tell you what I don’t think. I don’t think it’s the 12 witches, because I don’t think my luck would be for them to show up and help me out of my current predicament when I can’t find the one witch I need. I don’t think it’s 2 hybrids, because you need 12, and I don’t think that I’ll stay here if I don’t know what’s heading this way, so I don’t think you’re going to make it out of town before I find you.”

She took a deep breath. “Fine. Werewolves.”

“Are you gonna tell me how much time I have, or - ”

_Not long . . . an hour?”_

I actually believed that I had at least that long. She would’ve wanted to give me time to get from where I was to where she needed me to be, and if she’d been in touch with the professor at all today, she probably knew that I’d been at the lake house, so why call me in on this when she thought I was hours away and wouldn’t screw up her plans? The professor stopped replying, and she ran out of other options. Getting to my feet, I asked, “And what’s Rebekah doing here?”

_“You’d have to ask your friends . . . So, I guess this means I’m not gonna get those details about my family from you, huh?”_

As I headed in the direction of the old slave dungeon where Tyler used to chain himself up on a full moon, I answered, “A deal is a deal, and you told me enough last night that I was able to put together a plan for today, so I’ll send you what I’ve got when this is over, but I’m not verifying any of it first or digging any deeper, and right now the professor is dead, so any information you were hoping to get from him will be forgotten when I bring him back, which means you’re gonna have to wait longer to get it if he even feels like paying up . . . I’m hoping to scare him straight and out of the supernatural life.”

_”You screwed me over?”_

“It was really more of a two birds, one stone kind of thing, because I needed to do something about him, and I wanted to make sure you placed all your bets on me, but I thought I’d have more time than this, so I guess we’re both winning and losing something here.”

_You make it sound so fair.”_

Sarcasm now? Really? “It is except for the werewolves you’re leading to slaughter. It isn’t even a completely full moon, so how fair is that to them?” She didn’t respond, and I couldn’t afford to let myself get even the tiniest bit angry about the injustice here, so I ended the call with, “Anyway, I hope you feel terrible, and I’ll talk to you soon.”

I needed to use the time I had to plan, but before I forgot, in what was sure to be a chaotic night, I wanted to un-dagger Rebekah. I remembered that with Elijah, it’d taken some time for him to wake up, so she wouldn’t get in my way tonight, but she should be there for brunch tomorrow to help with April, and Alec did say that she was an ally in the making, so I might as well help her now, since I was here and all. Using the light from my phone, I went down into the dungeon, and knowing this place far better than I should, it didn’t take me very long to find her coffin. Pulling the dagger from her chest, I decided I was going to keep it, and if Klaus had a problem with that, he could ask for it tomorrow night at our vampire convention when he also asked for the white oak stake, but I wasn’t going to tell him I had it, and I doubted that Rebekah wanted him to get it back, so maybe I’d get away with it this time.

Turning from the casket, I pricked my finger with the blade and knelt down to scrawl a quick note for her in the dirt on the ground using my blood. _Meet at mine for brunch tomorrow? – Eve_

That should get the point across as long as she saw it, and she might if she caught a whiff of my blood. It smelled pretty rotten now, so she might look down to make sure she didn’t step in it, or she might just stumble right over it, especially if she was hungry, and she would be. That might be a problem if my attention was on the werewolves and she assumed I would do as a meal when she saw me. Did I have time to run to my car? Yeah, I needed to go there anyway to get some weapons. I could get her a blood bag while I was there.

On my way out of the building, I used a lighter to light a couple of the torches, so I’d be able to see better when I came back. I needed as much time as possible to prepare, and bumping around in the dark with the light of a phone for a second time was too many minutes to waste. When I got to the door of the outpost, I sprinted through the woods to my car to load up on things I thought I might need, including an assortment of weapons intended for vampires in case Hayley had lied to me and then jogged on the way back because my arsenal was weighing me down some. Leaving the gasoline canister, my bag, hunting crossbow, and compound bow at the door of the outpost, I ran down and tossed Rebekah a blood bag before heading back up. As I exited the ruins, I looked around at the space I had to work with here. I had a good 45 minutes to get this done, and I wasn’t limited by the sun, so I should just about make it, or that’s what I thought until I heard a rather loud crashing through the forest that was heading in my direction. 

There were definitely two patterns to the snapping twigs and heavy footfalls. If I dealt with them now, then that’d only leave me with 10 monsters to deal with later. Would it still count as a sacrifice if there were 45 minutes spread out between the deaths, or did it all just have to be in one place? Probably better to go the cautious route and assume that I’d have to move one of the monsters to another location to kill it, and I did have to kill it. I couldn’t let any of them live. I didn’t know what she’d told them to get them to come here. 

She could’ve told them that despite the rumors, Mystic Falls was a good place to party, so they should swing by and check it out, like normal young people did when they got drunk at supposedly haunted houses in the middle of nowhere. In that instance, they wouldn’t actually be a threat as long as they left before they realized there were vampires in town, but she could’ve also told them that I’d killed Jules’ pack or that I’d killed the hybrids they may have known as werewolves. Those were valid reasons for them to come to an isolated place and for her to also want me to be there. Who knew what other lies she might’ve told to get them to come to this location, and I couldn’t risk it, because if I let any of them go when they were here looking for a fight of some kind, then there was a good chance that I was going to have to deal with more werewolves in the future. 

I’d be surprised if there were 12 truly lone-wolf werewolves in the world, let alone that many that Hayley had met, so I was hoping that Hayley had targeted either a single pack of 12 or 12 werewolves who were a little on the wild-side and took off on their packs regularly without an explanation. That type seemed like it’d fit with her bad girl party image, so if those were the kinds of werewolves that she’d lured here, then I also hoped that she’d found a way to get them not to tell anyone where they were going. I was almost certain that’s what she would’ve done, because she wouldn’t have wanted to chance that there’d be more than 12 here. If more than 12 was acceptable for the sacrifice, and the location of the second point of the triangle was supposed to be on the Lockwood’s estate, then the hybrids I killed would’ve worked for the purposes of the Expression Triangle, but since magic required exact ingredients in its spells, I just didn’t think that was the case whether Hayley and Professor knew about the hybrids or not. 

After thinking it through, I started to tabulate what I knew and what I didn’t, and it didn’t add up. There seemed to be a lot of information missing – who the werewolves were, why they were coming here, what kind of weapons they might have. Shouldn’t I have been given as much information as possible if the goal was for me to kill all 12? I’d had to drag whether I was facing werewolves or vampires out of her too. Even then, it seemed obvious that I shouldn’t just plan for werewolves, which is why I’d grabbed plenty of vampire gear as well. It all had me circling back around to the question of why she called me, especially if she knew after last night that I wouldn’t want this sacrifice to go ahead? 

Professor Snake was a very intelligent, highly motivated strategist, and whether or not she told him that I’d try to stop them, he wouldn’t have left anything to chance. He wouldn’t have wanted me involved, because he knew I was out to get him, so he’d been able to tolerate me being at the lake house if it meant that I wasn’t here in town to mess up his plans, but she’d lost contact with him after I killed him. She hadn’t had any choice but to call me. Why? Their original plan must’ve gone south over the course of the day, and she hadn’t known what else to do to get it back on track. Had what Damon and the others been doing all day screwed up the professor’s plans? What’s the one point she’d wanted to get across first? Rebekah. 

I glanced in the direction of the outpost and decided that I was going to have to put the dagger back. I may have done exactly what I shouldn’t have done by removing it, but that’d have to wait until I dealt with the two marching through the forest towards me. Certainly didn’t move like vampires on the prowl, so maybe they really were werewolves. I didn’t have time to set things up in the way I wanted, but I did have time to take my weapons and hide. 

I’d wait for the scouting expedition to go explore the faint glow coming from the outpost. They’d find Rebekah, but they wouldn’t be able to kill her, so she’d be fine. Then, I’d just wait at the door for them. 2 werewolves down. 10 to go. 

There was a faint breeze in the air, so I made sure to stay down wind of the site as I retreated into the darkness and was already up on a lower hanging branch waiting for them to go into the outpost when I heard an angry, “I thought you said, she’d be here,” a few moments before Bonnie came charging out of the tree line with Elena close on her heels. Their timing was impeccable.


	39. I Said No

Elena scanned the small clearing looking for me. “She said she would be.”

“Then where the hell is she, Elena?!”

Maybe I should’ve let them know where I was, because I was in something of a hurry to get them out of here, so I could prepare for battle, but I was having a little too much fun watching them. Elena finally spotted the grave. “She was here. Look.” Getting closer to the grave until the scent made her gag, she went back over to Bonnie, saying, “Maybe she needed a break. I’m sure she’ll be back.”

“Are you kidding me? Your sister doesn’t have an off button. She isn’t taking a break. She’s around here somewhere laughing at us right now.” I breathed out a short laugh that Bonnie definitely didn’t hear, but Elena did. Turning her head in my direction, she finally spotted me, and slumped as her entire face fell, like she didn’t find any of this the least bit funny. Seeing her reaction, Bonnie shone the phone light she was using in the direction Elena had looked, and yeah, that light was way too bright for my current state. “Get down here. We have some things to discuss.”

Shielding my eyes with my forearm, I laughed again only a little louder this time. “That doesn’t sound all that enticing at the moment.”

“Well, then how about this? Get your ass down here, or I’m gonna knock you out of that tree? Is that enticing enough for you, Eve?”

With another little chuckle, I retorted, “There ya go. All you had to do was ask nicely,” before rolling backwards over the limb I was sitting on in what really was a graceful move this time. I stuck the landing of my dismount and glanced down at the mini-arsenal I’d left behind the base of the tree. I’d put it there, because climbing with it would’ve been a little loud for the supernatural ears that’d been coming my way, but the weapons should probably stay there for now. I needed Elena and Bonnie to go, and I didn’t think Elena would if she knew trouble was on its way here.

Stepping out of trees, I looked down at my wristwatch. “You guys can’t be here.”

“What?” 

I glanced briefly at Elena. It wasn’t what we’d agreed, so her surprise wasn’t all that unexpected, although Bonnie being here wasn’t what we’d agreed either, and that didn’t seem to matter to her. “You need to go. Something else has come up.“

That made a fairly grumpy Bonnie even less happy. “We’re not going anywhere. I was assured that Shane would be brought back tonight, and I’m not leaving until I know he’s all right.” 

Oh, it was going to be a very long time before the Snake was all right again. “Okay. Then where’s Imelda?”

As I got within a few feet of them, Bonnie took half a step back, so I stopped. Maybe it was because she felt the chill in the air grow as I got closer, but it was probably just as likely that my demeanor was disconcerting. I’d gone from joking lightheartedly in a tree to exuding a hunter’s calm the second my feet hit the ground. You could say I was channeling my inner Harley Quinn, teetering on a razor’s edge more than at any other time in my life. I had to reduce my negative emotions, and that was a lot easier for me to do now that I had a hunt, but I couldn’t turn my emotions completely off the way I normally did when I hunted either, or I’d feel more disconnected from humanity and those I cared about, which would drop my temperature more, so I was allowing myself to find amusement in small things to keep that from happening, while trying not to feel anything else. Elena quietly said, “I tried,” and I turned my attention on her.

She tried? I’d be willing to bet that I’d tried harder than she had, because I’d made several calls to Imelda on the way here, but I strongly suspected that Elena had always intended to use Bonnie, because Bonnie is who she trusted, so she may have gotten one call in before giving up. I didn't have all night. I wasn't sure I'd survive being outside when the sun same came up if this curse issue wasn't resolved by then, but I also had a bit of time to play around with if I needed it. It shouldn't take me long to deal with the monsters I was expecting. Add more time for me to kill the last monster somewhere else and drive back, and we should still have plenty of time before dawn to get done what we came here to do and get rid of the bodies. “Then you have an hour and a half to find her. Get to it.” 

“Not until you tell me why - “ I looked at Bonnie, and this time she took a full step back as she cut herself off. Okay, so maybe allowing myself to have a sense of humor meant some negative emotions could still slip through the cracks around my almost flipped switch. I’d gotten steadily worse over the last few months when it came to being questioned, particularly by the Mystic Falls residents, who I had come to believe were incompetent, and I was well aware that every second these two were here was a second I didn’t have to prepare for a battle, so I may have lost a little bit of the lid I had on feeling frustrated, even it was only for a second. “Oh my god . . . what did you do, Eve?”

Elena stepped forward asking, “What?” and Bonnie stuck her arm out to keep her back. “Her eyes, they . . . I thought they . . . “

She wasn’t sure she’d seen my eyes go black, but I was fairly certain that she had. Must’ve been a blink and you’d miss it kind of moment that she’d actually caught. Maybe I could use that. “They probably did . . . and that’s nothing. Watch this.” She took another half step back as I produced a pocket knife. Rolling up my jacket sleeve, I cut the back of my forearm and lifted it for them to both see. If I couldn’t get them out of here by telling them what to do, maybe I could scare them away if they thought that this was beyond Bonnie’s level of expertise. I mean, she could probably do it, because she could pretty much make the rules up as she went now, but that wasn't the point. All I needed was for her to believe this was out of her league. Bonnie's phone light once again shone some very unwelcome beams in my direction, and they both gasped at the sight of the black liquid seeping down my arm. I’m sure the fact that I’d gotten paler made it stand out more too. A few moments later, their hands flew to their faces to cover their noses, and Bonnie took another half step back, as Elena asked, “What is that smell?”

For a brief moment, the cold inside me receded somewhat as I exhaled another laugh. “I assume you’re not talking about Connor.”

Stepping in front of Bonnie, Elena briefly pointed in the direction of his grave saying, “Oh, I’m well aware of where he is. I’m talking about you.” 

She went to reach for my arm, and I pulled it away from her, a little less mirthful, but still feeling okay. “Welcome to what the 5th level was like in all its glory . . . Even the vomit never really quite captured it for what it was. Imagine swimming around in a bottomless river of the stuff.”

Her shoulders fell in compassion rather than the annoyance I was hoping to receive. “I’m so sorry, Eve.”

“Don’t apologize to her. You didn’t do this.”

Whipping around to look at Bonnie, Elena said, “If I had just done – “

If Elena had taken the intervention seriously last night, then maybe she could’ve found a way to convince Bonnie to stop using Expression without alienating her, but now that the professor was dead, that ship had sailed, and the last thing Bonnie needed to hear was Elena saying that she should’ve just done what I wanted last night, because Bonnie would take it as Elena saying that she shouldn’t have taken her side. If Elena finished that sentence, it wouldn’t just be bad for Elena and Bonnie’s relationship, but possibly a lot of other people if Bonnie started to lose control. She already had to feel pretty isolated and vulnerable with her mentor dead. Elena, of all people, couldn’t be the one to make that worse when she was already being given the benefit of a doubt over the guy's death from the looks of it. Leave all that blame on my shoulders. I could carry it just fine. “I’m inclined to agree with Bonnie. I did this to myself.” 

Elena stopped and then slowly turned her head in my direction. “Did you know this would happen?”

“Nope, but I was pretty sure that the side-effects weren't going to be anything good.”

Briefly shaking her head in frustration with herself, Elena countered, “I should’ve tried to stop you.”

“You couldn’t have.” She opened her mouth to argue with that, and with a brief flick of my hand in Bonnie’s direction, I added, “Why should Bonnie be the only one who gets to die for her beliefs? I mean at the end of the day, that’s what this is, a disagreement over what we believe until one of us is proven right. I believe she is being led to the slaughter by a very dangerous man who intends to raise his dead family by using her to free Silas, and she believes he’s a nice guy who is simply trying to help. She had more skin in the game because it was her life on the line, so why not match her to show I’m just as serious as she is . . . more even, because she doesn’t believe that Expression is going to kill her.”

They both kind of stood there, a little speechless until Bonnie quietly whispered, “You’re crazy.”

Giving her a slight smirk, I retorted, “Look who has something in common with Damon. He’s been known to say that I’m insane from time to time.”

“Yeah, well, I never thought I’d say this, but he’s right.”

If Bonnie was horrified, Elena had been notably silent until she whispered, “You’re dying?”

“Mm . . . pretty sure I am, so if you could run along and get a different witch, the more powerful the better, that’d be swell.”

“Will you stop telling us to leave?! I’m not just gonna leave you here like this.”

“I could shoot you full of vervain, and you won’t have a choice.”

Touching Elena’s upper arm, Bonnie leaned closer to her ear, without taking her eyes off of me. “If she wants to be a martyr, then I say we let her.”

“What about Shane?”

“Like she’s going to help bring him back. Let’s just go, and I’ll figure something else out.” 

Pulling her arm away from Bonnie and looking back at her, Elena quickly argued, “No. Eve’s a lot of things, but she doesn’t deserve to die. I can’t just wash my hands of her. She’s my sister.”

“I am so sick of hearing that. She isn’t your sister, Elena. She’s just a serial killer who walked into your life not even a year ago, and – “

“Bonnie, I only said that, because I was trying to help her convince Hayley – “

“It doesn’t matter why you said it. That doesn’t make it any less true.”

“But it isn’t true. She’s not as bad as you think. She’s – “

“90 people, Elena. 90! What was it you told me that Alec said? 17 is more than most hunters get in a lifetime, and she has over 90?! But that wasn’t enough, she had to go and murder Shane today, and what’s worse is that she somehow managed to convinced you to help her do it. She’s exactly what I think she is.”

“No,” Elena shook her head before saying, “She’s not. Maybe she did go over the top, but it’s only because we haven’t listened to anything she’s said about Shane, and last night was her way of giving a peaceful resolution one last shot, but I threw it away, and I know she’ll have a way to bring him back, because she said she did. She’s only saying that she doesn’t want your help, because she’s trying to teach me a lesson about putting you first. You’ve lost so much for me already, and if you help her now, she’s convinced that your power will get stronger, so it’ll be that much harder for you to control it.” Giving me a cautious look, Elena said, “And maybe she’s right, so you can leave if you want, but I’m staying, and I guess I’ll keep trying Imelda.”

Damn. The ‘good’ twin certainly knew how to wield the power of manipulation when she wanted. Any headway I’d made had been undone, and now Bonnie was thinking of staying. I glanced at my watch again. I didn’t have enough time left to do what I’d been planning, so I guess I was going to have to come up with something else. “Why do you keep checking the time?” 

I looked up to find Bonnie staring me and said, “I told you. Something else has come up, and – “

“What’s suddenly more important than following through on what you said you’d do for Shane?”

Picking a wonderful time to start having a brainstorming session, Elena quickly asked, “And why were you in a tree when we got here?”

“Because neither one of you knows how to be stealthy. I could hear you coming for at least 2 minutes before you got here.”

Elena looked from the tree I’d been in to our surroundings and then back at me with narrowed eyes. “But I told you I would be here. Why would you hide in a tree if you knew it was me?” Before I could say that it was an impromptu game of hide and seek, she found the answer herself. “It’s because you didn’t know if it was me . . . You thought it might be someone else. Who else is coming here?” I didn’t say anything or plan on saying anything, so she did. “You’re trying to protect us from whoever it is. That’s why you’re trying to send us away.” 

Nope. As the one who usually used the tactics she was using to find answers, I knew better than to play this game. Getting frustrated with my silence, Bonnie, decided threatening me would work again. “Eve, so help me god, if you don’t tell us what’s going on, I will – “

“Give me a brain aneurysm? Been there done that.”

Stepping forward, Bonnie gritted out, “Maybe I’ll just crush your hand so you won’t be able to kill anything for a while.”

All right, geez. “Well, since you brought it up, I’m looking to hit that 100 mark and exceed it.”

Bonnie seemed confused. Elena did too for a brief moment before surveying the area again. “What were the other two sacrifices that needed to happen again?”

“12 demon souls, i.e. – “

“Vampires or werewolves?” I nodded. “But if you kill all of them – “

“I won’t kill them all here, so it won’t be completed.”

“What the hell are you two talking about? What sacrifice?”

Elena and I shared a look. If she wanted a re-do of what she should’ve done last night, then she could try, but I was staying out of it. Bonnie wouldn’t hear anything that was said if I got involved, and to me, that was a failed plan of yesterday. I was already fully committed to the next plan. Seeing that she was on her own, Elena focused on Bonnie. 

“We’re talking about the Expression Triangle that Shane is trying to complete. Three different sacrifices all spread out - 12 human souls, 12 vampire or werewolf souls, and 12 . . . “ she hesitated before glancing at me for that one, but I remained stoic, and after a couple of seconds, she remembered what I’d said anyway. “Witch souls. The council members were the 12 human souls he sacrificed for it, and I’m starting to think that maybe since we were all at the lake house with him today, he thought it’d be a good time for the second sacrifice, the one with the vampires or werewolves, because he didn’t think we’d be here for it.“

Bonnie’s shoulders had fallen the more that Elena talked, like she was thinking, ‘Not you too,’ and then she started to shake her head, so Elena continued, “Bonnie, when you use Expression, it’s being boosted by the power of the Council members' deaths. If the second sacrifice happens, you’ll lose more control than you did last night, and I know you feel bad that happened. If he completes all three – “

“Why would – “

“Because he thinks that Silas will bring his family back from the dead . . . He is using you, and he doesn’t care what happens to you in the process. I wouldn’t lie to you, Bonnie - not about this - but if you don’t believe me, you’ll see when they show up and there are 12 - “

“How do we know she didn’t call them, and – “

“I doubt Eve’s let 12 vampires outside of the ones in this town live, and she definitely hasn’t gotten their phone numbers. She’s killed almost every werewolf she’s seen too. If anyone called them, then it was Shane or Hayley. Hayley admitted last night that she’s been working with him, didn’t she, Eve?” Continuing to keep my mouth shut as long as possible in the off chance that Bonnie would actually hear Elena, I simply nodded, and Elena asked, “She called to tell you it was happening tonight, didn’t she?” I didn’t need to nod for her to say, “And it’s here, isn’t it?”

“Fortuitous, huh?”

“Not really. If we put off bringing Shane back much longer, I’m not sure you’ll survive it. How much time do we have before they get here?”

“35 minutes give or take.”

“Do you know which it is - werewolves or vampires?” 

“Not really. Can’t trust the source of my intel. For all I know, it could be a battle between 6 werewolves and 6 vampires. The fact that I don’t know anything about it other than that it’s happening here means that I’m not the one Professor Snake intended to do the killing. I think it might be an Original. Rebekah’s here, so it involves her somehow. Without knowing the specifics, I just need to deal with the 12 before any high-powered Originals get involved and slaughter all 12 in one go.” 

Taking on a somewhat matronly demeanor, Elena said, “Then you’re going to need to be at your best, and you’re about as far from it as you can be right now.” Turning to Bonnie, she asked, “How long would it take you to do a spell?”

“Elena, I don’t even know what the spell is. You haven’t told me.”

Elena turned to me for that one, because I hadn’t gotten into the details with her, just the over-arching scheme. “I don’t want – “

Bonnie stepped in, “Yeah, well, I don’t want to be here in the middle of the night relying on you to do the right thing to bring Shane back, but we don’t always get what we want. What’s the damn spell?”

“I’m not a witch encyclopedia. I don’t know the spell.” 

At Bonnie’s frustrated expression, Elena sighed and said, “To bring someone back to life with the talisman, other people had to touch it, and then they’d die in that person’s place. The number of lives that were required was determined by whatever the person who owned the talisman rolled, but if the owner didn’t roll it before dying, then the talisman decided how many people that person was worth, and since Eve can’t be rolled, she thinks she might be the one who decides what it will take to bring him back, so she decided one dead man was what it would take.” 

I glanced in the direction of the grave before adding, “Hence the corpse."

"And?" Like I was going to go into more detail with someone I didn't want involved. "I'm sick of your shit, Eve. A man is dead. Tell us how you plan to bring him back, or - "

Either intuiting that I was willing to call Bonnie's bluff this time or that Bonnie wasn't going to bluff, possibly both, Elena quickly answered with what she knew, "A dead man could be a vampire. That's why she doesn't want me to touch her, but she doesn't want to send any vampires to Hell either, and right now, Shane's not in Hell. He's in the same kind of holding cell that Alec was in when he died the first time, so he's having all these images flash in front of him about Silas, and - "

"Or the book."

She looked at me, and I clarified, "I mean he was, technically, looking at a book about Silas. Maybe all he's learning about is the future of the book. Either way, he won't remember a thing about his own life when he comes back."

"You said you were giving him a chance to reform."

"And I am . . . by not letting his old life and motivations spring board him back onto the same path."

Her mouth briefly dropped open, and I could tell she had a few things to discuss with me when this was all over, but remembering her role as peacemaker, she quickly turned her attention back to Bonnie. "The point is that he's not in Hell right now, but if he dies again after he comes back, even if it's 50 years from now, he will go to the Hell part."

Yeah, she might be trying to make a case for me, so Bonnie didn't decide to use me as kindling for her next fire, but if she was just going to give away everything I'd said to her earlier, then she could be a bit less comprehensive. "And I don't want to separate him from his family forever, so I found a loop hole." 

Echoing my words from a minute ago, Elena added, "Hence the corpse." Her eyes briefly flicked to me, like she wanted to make sure she had this right as she added, "It's currently vacant, so if a witch - "

"Imelda."

Ignoring me, she said, " _a witch_ takes Shane from where he is - " 

"Elena stop it."

"No. If a witch puts him in Connor's body, and then Eve kills that body, she'll have fulfilled the price to bring Shane back. That's the loop hole. If he's his own price for coming back, then he’ll have fulfilled the price of the soul meant for Hell without anyone actually having to go there.”

Bonnie’s entire affect had fallen by the end. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”

She didn't. Not really. She was repeating back what I'd said to her earlier in the day, so I gave a glib response for her. “Yep. I finally get to kill a revenant."

"Revenant . . . Wait, you mean actual necromancy?! "

Taking an elaborate bow, I pointed out the obvious. "Hunter, harboring extremely potent necromancy magic. Glad to make your acquaintance."

Her eyes widened, and Elena quickly said, "I don't know the exact spell, but I think she thinks it'll be a twist on what a witch does when they put a soul into another body through natural means."

"Elena!" She shot me a dirty look. "Remind me why I'm not staking you right now?"

Bonnie responded instead. "Because I wouldn't let you."

Elena briefly shook her head. "That's not it. It's because she'd never do anything to hurt me - not physically at least."

"Yeah, well don't expect me to ever tell you anything again. You're like a freaking sieve leaking information out everywhere."

Bonnie quietly interceded, "I - I still don't see how that can work. It'd require channeling - " My eyebrow arched, and she quickly said, "You have something."

Hello? I'd just told her, but she couldn't wrap her head around it because of the unorthodox nature of it, and maybe because I was being an ass to intentionally muddy the waters. I was that something. Imelda was going to have to fight against the cure to reach the professor, and it was a smart, ever-evolving, conscious piece of witchcraft that was going to do whatever it could to hold onto him and keep its rules from being broken. Doing that and resurrecting him in a body was going to require a power source to focus one's magic and to use as a power boost if necessary, and I happened to be a walking talking talisman now, so the power source was me. I didn't plan on clearing that up for Bonnie, but my diabolical twin did. "It’s her. She said it herself. She's full of the kind of magic needed to raise someone from the dead.” 

Bonnie's head snapped in my direction. “No witch in her right mind – “

“She would if it means ridding the world of the dark magic I’m carrying around with me. Whatever happens, I won’t be going back to the condition I was in this morning. Either she kills me in the process and the curse will be gone when I come back; she kills me, and I don’t come back, because the curse has laid claim to my soul and takes me down right along with it; or maybe she transfers the curse over to the corpse, so when I kill the corpse, it’ll be gone. If it means getting rid of this evil by using conventional magic and doing the least amount of harm, then Imelda would consider it even though it might mean raising a corpse, because that corpse won’t be Connor, so Connor’s time will still be officially over. Her only sticking point would be doing something that would bring Shane back at the end of it. I’d have to hear what she said, but since she moved here, she’s been a little less black and white in her thinking, so I’m sure I could convince her if I made the right kind of deal – providing it doesn’t include exterminating every vampire on the planet. I was thinking of telling her I’d seek out more dark objects like the demon die and destroy them. That kind of thing gives witches a bad name.”

“Is that why you did all this? Did you kill him, so you could get rid of your curse?!“

“Did you miss the part where I said there’s a good chance this will kill me? You didn’t think I’d thought of who I would be dealing with to make this work, but I did. I’ve covered all the angles. I needed to do something about what you and Shane have been doing, and talking doesn’t seem to be working, so if there’s a bonus at the end of it for me, then so be it. I have yet to find something that is truly altruistic for me to do, although I keep trying.”

“Well, at least you’re finally being honest.”

“When have I not been? I told you to stay away from Shane because he wanted to use you for something nefarious, and you didn’t do it. I told you that Expression will kill you, and you haven’t done anything to rid yourself of it. I told you that he’s using you to bring Silas back, and I know Alice told you that Silas returning will trigger an apocalypse. Now, I am explicitly telling you that Silas’s apocalypse will be bringing back the dead, but he won’t be bringing back people, just monsters and witches according to the lore – and that by the way, is what I’m really getting out of this, because I don’t want every monster I’ve killed to come back. It would erase my entire life’s work and make my life meaningless. I’d rather die than let that happen and have those monsters unleashed back on an unsuspecting civilian population, so how’s that for honesty?” 

She didn’t immediately respond, and I’m guessing it’s because my eyes had gone black again and for longer this time. With a sigh, I tried to blink it away, but I didn’t know how successful I’d been as I continued in a calmer, much more tired sounding tone. “Anyway, I told you last night that you had until I found him to get done what you wanted to do with Jeremy, so what I did today shouldn’t have come as a shock, and he didn’t help with Jeremy out of the goodness of his heart either. He needs Jeremy too. That tattoo of his has the spell Shane needs to free Silas, and Elena was right. Nothing he has said or done is for anything other than bringing back his family, so I have to assume that his wife and son were both witches if it means Silas can bring them back, and you do the math. His son died a few months before his wife did. It was just some freak accident, but when she died, it was of a massive hemorrhage in her brain that couldn’t be explained by anything less than 4 burst aneurysms, and if that wasn’t bad enough, she also had a heart attack. With her being a witch, I’d say she over-exerted herself, and I think it’s because she was using Expression to try and bring their son back, so Shane knows what the consequences for you using it will be . . . but you don’t want to hear any of that from me, so maybe you’ll listen to him in his long road to recover whatever memories he had, because they’re all gone now as is his motivation for raising Silas . . . I was honest with him too, you know. I did say he was on my radar and that I was going to figure out what he was planning, but he didn’t listen either.”

Maybe starting to think I was right, but not wanting not admit it, Bonnie’s eyes shown fiercely with unshed tears. “Screw you, Eve! You couldn’t come up with any of this last night before you went and snapped the man’s neck? I’m out.”

She turned to leave, and Elena tried to stop her. “Bonnie, wait!” I looked at my watch, and now I was looking at about 30 minutes to come up with anything. “Do something!”

When I glanced at Elena, it became apparent she’d been talking to me, and I shrugged. “Like what?”

“Apologize and mean it!”

“Apologize for what?! Look, I’m really tired Elena. I’m tired of this. I’m tired of repeating myself over and over again. I’m just tired. I only had about 30 minutes of sleep before you came over this morning and my body temperature is dropping to hypothermic levels. I just want to stop this sacrifice from happening, go find Imelda, and then go to bed or die. Either way, I won’t be tired anymore.” On a good day, she didn’t find my dark humor funny, but in that moment, she found it as close to blasphemous as I could’ve gotten for her. She didn’t just march her way up to me. She vampire zoomed in front of me, and I barely had time to dodge her hand as it flew towards my face. “Hey, watch it!” Did she heed my warning? No. I dodged again and had to take a step back as she tried to slap me from the other direction. “What are you doing?!”

“Do you think this is funny – that dying is a joke? What about Damon? He needs you. And Jeremy is expecting you to train him. He looks up to you. And what about me? You have responsibilities to all of us, and I thought you said you understood what that meant!” 

She swung a punch that time, and I stepped to the side as I brought the back of my left hand up to shove her arm past me. No, skin on skin contact, because I’d connected with her sleeve, so she was okay, but she was getting closer. “Elena, stop it! You can’t touch me!”

Turning back towards me, she settled for punching me in the shoulder as she shouted, “Don’t you think I know that?! If you won’t take this seriously, I know one way to bring him back and make this all go away.”

“And condemn both of you to hell while simultaneously making sure your soul is the fuel this thing needs for my death?! Great plan, Elena. Seriously, you’re a master at forward thinking. Is there a class you teach, so I can learn a thing or two, or – “ 

Retreating back in fear, she quickly said, “Eve, stop it! You’re making it worse. I’m sorry, okay?”

Turning away from her, hands clenched at my sides, I growled out my frustration. I felt sick, but it didn’t feel like I had a bunch of knives in my stomach anymore. The curse might be becoming one with me, but at least it didn’t hurt, so that was something. What neither of us had noticed until that moment was that Bonnie hadn’t gotten far. “Will both of you just stop fighting? I’ll do it.” I looked back at her over my shoulder, and she made a point of saying, “But I’m not doing it for you. I think you deserve what you get for what you did to Shane, but Elena doesn’t deserve to lose somebody else.”

Why didn’t anyone ever listen to me? If I didn’t suspect that it was because I was always saying things they didn’t want to hear, I’d think those witches put a curse on me before I was born. “Thanks, but I don’t want your help.”

“It’s my choice to do it just as much as it was your choice to do this to yourself. You don’t get to dictate what I do or how I use my gifts. Why can’t you see that?”

“Well, why can’t you see that it’s my choice on whether or not I accept the help?” 

“Eve, please!” 

Okay, I had been a little immature there. I glanced at Elena to acknowledge that, and Bonnie tried again. “What if I absolve you of anything that may or may not happen to me if I do this?”

“I’d say, that’s great, but how am I supposed to absolve myself if you get worse on my account?” Elena was getting more and more frustrated with me, but that one seemed to have made Bonnie come to some kind of realization. “What? You may not think it, but I know the bad things I’ve done a lot better than you ever will, and I am literally up to my eyeballs in atonement for the people I’ve let die over the years. I figure that makes me just about even minus the two men that I killed right after I came back. Might’ve been an accident on my part, because I’m too rough with humans, but I still killed them. Do you think I wanna keep adding more to the tab now? I don’t . . . and I don’t want to control you either, Bonnie. I can’t. What you say, think, feel, do is in your hands and yours alone, but what’s in my control is how I respond to what you do, and right now, you’re the victim in this situation, so all I want is to get you help, but if you persist after all the warnings and the power you’re becoming addicted to doesn’t kill you right away, then at a certain point you’ll no longer be the victim. You’ll become the monster. If I in any way contribute to that, then that’ll be on me, and I will be as responsible for what you do as you are. There are a lot of reasons why I hunt, but a big one is that I stop future killings from happening, and that’s what I’m attempting to do now, so no, I don’t want your help. I just want you and Elena to go.” 

It was quiet when I finished, so to cut through the silence, I grumbled, “Besides, if I wanted to explode, I’d step on one of my landmines. I don’t need you for that.”

Bonnie’s mouth curled up at the ends, and she nodded to herself before turning to walk away. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t try.”

Elena called her name, so I was distracted by that, but there’s probably very little I could’ve done about it anyway when Bonnie suddenly turned back to us, hand out stretched in my direction. “Bonnie, don’t you fucking dare. I will - ”

A feeling of wooziness overcame me, and I immediately fell to my knees. “You’ll what? Tell me that you’ll track my Mom down and kill her again?!“

That’s when my ordeal really began. It didn’t start off as pain - just a very bizarre numbness that began at my core and radiated throughout my limbs. It was a blanket of heaviness from a foreign invasion. Fighting against it, I got one foot under me saying, “Maybe I’ll just find her and tell her to come deal with her brat. She was a witch, so she knows the shit you’re doing is wrong.” Before I could stand, the numbness started to fade into a tingling sensation, and I grumbled, “Your Dad can chip in too. I am so sick of parents either being abusive or neglectful and turning their children into monsters.”

Sounding amused, Elena murmured, “So are you saying that you’re going to tell on her,” and I flicked a look in her direction to respond when the tingling started to cut deeper, like tiny internal razor blades.

First one, then ten, then hundreds, and it wasn’t long before I started to feel like I was being slowly skinned alive from the inside. Clutching my chest, like my body instinctively wanted to protect my heart, I yelled, “Bonnie, I said no!” Folding in on myself, I panted a few times and managed to get out, “You can’t do it like this! You can’t just use your magic to rip whatever you find back out. You have to - ” Automatic tears sprang into my eyes, and I started to wheeze as the air was cut from my lungs. It was just before the pain magnified 10-fold that I shrieked, “Channel me to negotiate through it . . . or you’re gonna take pieces of me with him, Bonnie!” 

I fell forward, forehead to the ground and arms around my head for protection, but there was no protecting myself from this. From head to toe, I was being turned inside out, as the millions of black vines this curse had grown inside of me tightened their grip and she tried to rip right through them in an excruciating tug of war with me stuck in the middle. That was me done talking. I did start to scream though . . . a lot, like every time I could find the breath to do it. That’s when Elena tried to step in. “Hey, Bonnie? Bonnie, something’s wrong . . . Bonnie, you’re hurting her!” 

The pain grew into an almighty crescendo and my screams right along with it until I could almost feel parts of my soul bleeding, or maybe that was just my internal organs. No longer able to even scream to vent the agony, I tried to distance myself from the all-encompassing pain and do something I hadn’t been able to do since I came back with the cure, find where I ended and it began, so that I could hold onto all the parts that were me. That was my one task. I had to shut everything else out and focus entirely on that. I may be on the brink of death, but I would not go down without a fight, even if that battle was an internal one. I held onto everything that I could for as long as I could, through the painful beating of my heart as it tried to flee my chest, through the migraine, through the liquid that began frothing out of my mouth. I held onto it all until I started to convulse and lost consciousness.


	40. EVV and Eve

“Don’t touch her, Elena. It isn’t safe.” My eyes tried to flutter, and I mostly thought that was just about the last voice in the world that I wanted to hear right now. “She needs to kill him before the process can be completed.”

“And, how’s she’s supposed to do that now, Bonnie?!”

“Do you honestly think Imelda would’ve done anything different?” 

Getting up from a kneeling position not far from me, Elena started to pace, and if my throat hadn’t felt like it was on fire, I might’ve said that Imelda would’ve understood the finesse required. She would’ve used a scalpel instead of a chainsaw so she could inflict the least amount of pain possible. Instead, I croaked out, “Did I die?”

Elena quickly came back to her place of vigil next to me. “No . . . No, I think you just passed out.”

That was too uncertain of an answer for me. “I need . . . a definitive . . . yes or no.” My eyelids opened into narrow slits, and I realized that I was on my side. How that happened, I didn’t know. Probably fell over during the convulsions. Letting my eyes close again, I mumbled, “Do you think I was able to get out of bed . . . after the number she put me through last night . . . without some help?” Nothing? I pulled in a couple of shallow breaths before murmuring, “Imelda’s herbs . . . don’t work as fast as I needed them to work . . . I would’ve bled out from the wound in my side . . . or been too weak to do what I needed to do today . . . so did I die just now?”

“That’s what you meant when you said you’d be back if you died?!”

Opening my eyes to examine the ring on my thumb, I answered, “Didn’t know what trumps what . . . this ring, vampire blood, or the curse making death permanent . . . Guessing I didn’t die, since we’re not surrounded by monsters right now . . . takes hours to come back either way.” 

Smacking the ground with her hand, Elena got my attention and growled, “You and your stupid educated guesses and idiotic experiments! How many times do you think you can keep getting by with doing things like this?!” Funny. I'd wanted an experienced witch to do this for a reason. The risk would’ve been much lower with one. I simply sighed in response, and Elena calmed down before quickly shaking her head. “I don’t think . . . I mean, I know, you didn’t die.”

Then it was because of pure luck and maybe my strength of will, but nothing to do with Bonnie. She had a long way to go and a massive amount of training to undertake before her knowledge would catch up with the innate power she had. I nodded to myself before hoarsely saying, “Where is he?”

Looking off to the side, at what I presume was the grave, Elena said, “Bonnie has him trapped, but I don’t think – “ 

Putting all my effort into rolling forward, I struggled to get my arms under me. It was even harder to push my weight up enough to pull one of my knees forward. Elena reached out, like she was going to wrap an arm around my waist to help me up, and I snapped, “Don’t touch me! I don’t need your fucking help.” She recoiled away from me, and I knew she hadn’t done this, but that’s only because she hadn’t had the ability to do it. In her haste to make me better at her convenience, she’d gotten her best friend to do it with all her whiny pleading. She might as well have done it herself. 

After what I’d just been through, the nausea in my stomach from the anger barely even registered. If anything, it seemed to be the fuel I needed to get my other knee under me. Now I was kneeling and halfway there. After a few sharp breaths, I slid a foot forward, then took a small break before pressing my hands down on my knee to help me push myself up enough to get the other foot forward, and I was standing . . . sort of . . . knees still bent, I placed my hands on the front of my thighs to maintain my balance, took a few more breaths, and then finally forced myself to stand upright, so I could see my target. I didn’t. He must be trapped in the grave.

It was pretty disappointing when I realized that all my dreams of killing a revenant had been reduced to this. Me, barely able to move, and it stuck in a hole. “He can wait.” _Oh, now getting this done can wait, can it?_ I glanced at Elena, and she added, “We should take you to Meredith, so she can check you out. “

Exhaling a derisive laugh, I focused on the grave and forced myself to take a step in that direction. “All I want . . . is what I’ve wanted this whole time . . . For you to go . . . I’m gonna kill him, so that happens faster.”

She stepped with me. “You can’t be serious. You can’t – “ I took another step to get away from her, but she came with me saying, “Eve, you can’t go up against 12 monsters now.”

Taking another step, I tilted my wrist to look at my watch, and there was some time, but not much of it left. “Watch me . . . or don’t. I assume you two brought him with you . . . He’s gonna need someone at the car when he’s revived.” 

“No, I’m taking you to – “

She reached for my arm, and I once again lost my cool. “I said, don’t fucking touch me!”

Her hands fell to her sides, and she tossed a quick uncertain glance in Bonnie’s direction before following me in the next step I took as she said, “Eve, I really think – “

“I don’t care what you think, Elena.” I exhaled another mirthless laugh, as I continued on my path a little quicker. “Now, I remember why I was so screwed up on my idea of relationships when I first got here . . . You’re just like Mom and Dad . . .Think you can do whatever you want to the people you care about . . . in the name of caring for them . . . always expect to be forgiven . . . but I know better now . . . That’s not how it should be, and I won’t go back to that.” 

“What are you saying?” 

I shot her a glare out of the corner of my eye and heard Bonnie coming up behind me on the right. If I was feeling a little over Elena right now, then I felt downright homicidal towards, Bonnie, and she didn’t even sound angry as she gently said, “Hey, if you’re gonna blame anyone - “

Dropping the stake up my sleeve, I turned faster than either of them probably thought I could on a good day, let alone with as broken as I was right now. The tip connected with her throat, but I’d stopped just shy of really puncturing her. It all happened so fast that it took a couple of seconds for her brain to catch up with her body after it flinched. Her eyes were only beginning to widened in fear as I gruffly said, “Oh, I do,” and then released her. Turning back in the direction of the grave, I added, “And I know why you did it . . . So, good job, I don’t feel responsible for it at all . . . but I do see you as a monster now, and I’m gonna need some time to either get over it or find out if it’s true . . . you should probably go wait for your professor in the car . . . take him back to your house or Caroline’s or the boarding house where there are no parents . . . somewhere he’s never been . . . or you could take him to his office and see if he remembers how to get home, but if you do that, I’m just gonna kill him outright. The choice is yours as always, Bonnie. Choose wisely.” 

“I think I’m gonna . . . “ 

Elena looked back at Bonnie, and nodded, like she understood if Bonnie wanted to take me up on my advice, but she had apparently decided to stay. Finally, stepping up to the edge of the grave, I looked down at the writhing, rotting corpse. Wonder if the Snake was going to remember this part. Hopefully not. “How do you want to do this?”

Ignoring Elena’s question, I fell to my ass and scooted closer to the pit. Better not get stuck in here too with whatever binding spell she’d used. Pushing myself forward, my feet hit the ground, and I stood over him. How _did_ I want to do this? He didn’t even appear to be able to get up from the ground. It was like she’d glued him to the spot. Well, this was no fun, but maybe that had been Bonnie’s point. Holding onto the ledge of the grave for support, I reached down and pressed my palm to his forehead. He didn’t die on contact. Were the rules changing? Maybe since I’d killed him at the same time that I’d touched him earlier, I had to do the same thing now? 

If he truly was a revenant, then movies said to damage the brain, but lore said to remove the heart. How the fuck was I supposed to do that without my machete? It was just over there . . . behind the tree. I was gonna have to ask Elena to go get it, wasn’t I? I was starting to loosen up some, so I wasn’t as sore when I moved, but I didn’t have time to get there and make my way back given the current state of my legs. “Can you go get my machete? It’s behind the tree where you found me.” She was there and back in a flash, but instead of bringing my machete, she’d brought the entire arsenal. Unzipping my bag, I took out what I needed and unsheathed it. Wrapping both hands around the handle, I aimed the tip of the blade just below the rib cage, and since I was in a weakened state, decided to use the weight of my body to drive it into him instead of using the muscles in my arms to do it. 

It sliced through his rotten flesh, like butter, and I almost fell on top of him as I lost my balance. To make matters worse, my favorite machete was now embedded deep into the ground, which probably ruined the blade, and now he was wiggling around even more. I turned my face away from the smell as the nauseous gasses that his body had been storing started pouring out of the wound. Jumping down into the hole with me, Elena tried not to gag as she said, “Here, let me help. What are you trying to do?”

“To kill a revenant, the lore says to rip out its heart.”

“Then let me do it.”

“I have to be touching him when he dies again.” 

Nodding, like she understood, she looked down at the body and said, “So let me do it while you hold him down.” 

“There are no do-overs here. I don’t want to chance getting it wrong, so to cover all my bases, I have to assume that I’m the one who has to kill him, while also touching him, which I will be doing when I wrap my hand around his heart. I just needed a starter hole, so I can get my hand in his chest, and - ” 

“It’s going to take you too long to find it if you start way down here.” Elena stepped on his chest to hold him down while she pulled my machete free and handed it to me before focusing on him. A couple of short breaths to steady herself, and she plunged her fist into his chest, made a horrible face, as she felt around for his heart, garbled, “Found it,” and turned away from him before dry heaving all over the side of the grave. 

I'd never seen a vampire vomit, and it didn't look like it was going to happen now, but it sure was the closest I'd ever seen one get to actually doing it. I snorted and saw her shoulders relax before she slowly turned back to look at me, like she was surprised by something. "Elena, the Vomiting Vampire, brought to you from the makers of Eve. When EVV and Eve team up, things get gross.” 

I chuckled at my movie campaign slogan, and taking what I’d said as a positive sign, she briefly smiled before using the back of her clean hand to wipe her mouth of the drool. "Is this you compartmentalizing?"

Rolling my eyes, I retorted, "Look, EVV, I don't have all night to sit around dealing with your hurt feelings brought on by my justifiable anger towards you. I've got revenants to kill."

With a sigh, she muttered, "I'll take that as a yes," before pointing at the body. “You can call me whatever you want if you hurry up and finish this, so we can get out of here.”

Sure. Stepping over him, I switched sides, rolled up my right sleeve, put my left hand on his forehead to hold him down, and dove right in with my other. Found the heart. No problem. Ripping it out wasn’t all that easy though. Even after this body being dead for a couple of weeks, it was still pretty well attached, or I was just overwhelmingly weak - it was probably that, or maybe it was that as a proper revenant that’d been brought back with a necromancer’s magic, its heart had been reinforced to make it harder to kill. I almost considered just getting a knife to cut the heart out when I felt it start to give. Another couple of good, solid pulls, and I yanked it out. He stopped moving, and I would’ve been tempted to breathe a sigh of relief if it hadn’t meant I’d have inhale again. The flesh from his face had sloughed off into my hand, and I’d just managed to fling it away from me when I suddenly got very dizzy. “Eve?”

“Something’s wrong.”

“Let’s get out of here, and – “

“No, it’s not the body. I – “ No escalation. No screaming. No pain. My eyes just rolled back, and I went straight into another convulsion right there over the corpse.

When I came to that time, I was being rocked back and forth to a whimpering, “I’m sorry. Please, please, please be okay.”

What the fuck was she doing? “Are you cradling me?” Before she could answer, I added a revolted, “Yuck. Did you give me your blood?” It sure as hell tasted like it, and we weren’t far from the grave, so the smells of that mixed the with the taste of the blood . . . not a good combination. “Gross!”

Pushing myself out of her arms, I looked back to find a simpering, snotting, mess of a twin behind me. “I had to do something! You were dying.” 

Turning my head away from her, I tried spitting out the liquid coating my mouth and would’ve used my hands to wipe it off my tongue if they hadn't been contaminated by a rotting corpse. “And you touched me in the process, so what if killing him wasn’t enough, and - “

“I used your phone to call Bonnie. She said she wasn’t going to come back, but it did work. He’s alive.”

“What if I marked you somehow? What if by changing the rules, I made it so now this curse has an effect on vampires?”

“Then shouldn’t the rules be that you kill a living person and bring them back with someone dead?” 

After contemplating it, I huffed out a sigh. “You’re probably right.” Getting to my feet, I grumbled, “I’ve just been brutalized and violated about all I can take tonight. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“I know . . . That’s why I think we should go.”

“I’m not leaving. I have a job to do.”

“Why does it have to be done by you?”

Honestly, I was too tired to come up with anymore bullshit about it being my responsibility for the umpteenth time. “Because I want to do it.”

“But we could call the others and – “

Picking up my weapons, I looked at my watch again and interrupted her. “A) We’re out of time. The guests will be arriving any minute. B) I really need to kill something right now. I don’t expect you to understand that, but I need to vent, and my pathetic revenant really wasn’t enough to do that. And C) I like hunting alone. It gives me freedom. I can think faster and move faster and do what needs to be done without having to stop to explain or argue or wait for others to play their part, and while I don’t mind learning how to be on a team, I am just not up for that tonight, so go home, Elena. I’ll be fine.”

“No!” Stopping in my trek to a tree that would give me good visibility while also hiding my scent thanks to the grave, I turned to look back at her, eyebrow quirked up with an unspoken, ‘you have got to be kidding me,’ and she said, “There are possibly 12 vampires coming this way, and that’s almost half of what was released from the tomb. If John had to have all the deputies help him get rid of them, I’m not letting you do this alone, especially if it means you’re going to turn if one of them kills you. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. No questions asked, but I’m not going anywhere, and you’d better not stick a vervain dart in me or break my neck, which is exactly what I’m expecting you to do, but I really hope you don’t. I don’t want to fight you when we could be fighting them - the Gilbert twins teaming up to fight the good fight, just like you said you wanted.”

Maybe she'd like my movie concept more than I'd intended. “In an intervention that was primarily supposed to be a conversation, sure, but – “

“But nothing. You trained me, didn’t you?”

“To protect yourself, not go looking for fights.”

“I still learned the same skills . . . Look, I know you’re feeling better because of my blood, but what you should be doing is going to see Meredith, because you’re still really pale, and I don’t think it’s all from the curse. You almost died twice, and now you’re pushing yourself even harder. Just let me take some of the burden. Please?” For fuck’s sake. I was more convinced than ever that ‘please’ really was created to manipulate people. I rolled my eyes, and before I could say no, Elena added, “If you don’t agree, I’m just going to stay anyway, and what are you going to do if you knock me out, carry me around? That’ll definitely slow you down.”

“Could just roll your body into the grave with the corpse for safe keeping until they’re gone.”

Looking back at the pit, she made a face. “Please don’t . . . Come on, just tell me what to do. We’re wasting time arguing about it.“

She wasn't wrong about that. The time for arguing with her stubborn ass had evaporated. “All right. Fine. If you wanna help . . . go stand in the middle . . . an equal distance between the door of the outpost and the tree line. I was hoping that the light from the building would be a draw, but you standing there would be better. When they see you, one of them is going to want to know who you are, what you want, or if you’re going to try and get in their way. Don’t answer at first. Just stand there and look confident, but make sure your stance says they aren’t going to get past you and into that outpost. The person doing the talking will be the leader, so focus on that person. When they stop getting closer, that’s when you start talking, and it’ll draw them in more."

"Say whatever you need to say to get as many of them as close to you as possible. Insults, witty banter, implied threats, that kind of thing, but don’t make a direct threat or act menacing, or they’ll be the ones who initiate. We want to be the ones who draw blood first, or we’ll be playing defense. With this many, that’s not what we want . . . and wear this. There’s a chance they might be expecting me, so we’ll play into that idea. If they think I’m in front of them, they won’t know that I’m out here lining them up in my sights.” 

Shrugging out of my jacket, I handed it to her, and while she put it on, I knelt down to start pulling things out of my weapons bag. “Take these two grenades . . . This one is for vampires. This one is for werewolves. Keep them hidden up your sleeves. Put the vervain grenade in your right hand. Wolfsbane in your left. On my cue, pull the pin with your thumb on the grenade for what type of monster we’re facing, and drop it, so I’ll know what they are if it isn’t obvious to me by then. If they’re vampires, you’ll have about 5 seconds to get out of there before you get an unhealthy dose of vervain. They’ll be distracted by my cue, but you’ll know it’s coming, so don’t get distracted by it too, and that’ll buy you two seconds, one to put the other grenade in your pocket to free up your hands, and the second to snap the neck of the leader." 

"There are two types of leader. It'll either be the closest vampire to you or the one that's a little behind the others, but either way, it'll be the only one talking. Use the other three seconds to get out of there. If any of them catch up to you, and you have to fight, use this stake. Our hands are the same size, so it should be fine for you even if you didn’t make it yourself. The second you get a clear opening, run to me as fast as those vampire legs of yours can carry you. Use the wolfsbane grenade to create that opening if you don’t have any other choice. It’s a modified flash grenade.”

“If we’re dealing with werewolves, drop the wolfsbane grenade, use your vampire speed to put the vervain grenade into your right pocket, and grab this wolfsbane dart out of the same pocket while they’re distracted. Jab the dart into the neck of the leader to knock it out by the 3rd second. What we want to do is have the monster we’re saving to kill somewhere else out of the way first, so we don’t have to waste time trying to spare any of the others, and the same thing applies if they’re werewolves that does if they’re vampires; fight your way out if you're caught and use the vervain grenade if you need it . . . just expect both grenades to be bright and loud, so don’t look at them when they explode and try not to be too close, or you’re going to lose your hearing for about 10 seconds, but so will the others that are around you . . . If that happens, just focus on getting out and running to me. I’ll take it from there.”

Looking like a girl who was worried about an exam she wasn’t prepared to take, Elena nodded, while she put the dart in her right pocket. She wasn’t quite sure where to put the stake, so I took her hand and pushed it up her sleeve into the little sheath sown into the lining for it. Finding the button that was where any other button on the cuff would be, I said, “Push this, and it’ll launch the dart into your hand, but it’ll be fast. You’ll have to catch it, or it’ll just shoot out, and whoever you’re fighting will pick it up. Try it.” I stood back a step, and she did. 

Catching it on the first try, she beamed up at me. “I couldn’t even hear it.”

“Nope. One of many homemade designs that I’ll never be able to patent. They’re sewn into the lining of most of my jackets, and when they’re not, I still have a stake jammed up there anyway, but it takes a lot of practice to know how to wiggle it loose and drop it into your hand almost as fast.”

“But I can hardly even feel it in there.”

“My jackets are never tight around the arms.”

“I know, but . . . Eve, I don’t think you know how amazing this is.”

Waving that off, I muttered, “Meh, it’s an old design. I barely even think about it anymore unless I have to get rid of one of my jackets and replace it with a new one." She gave me a look that said she’d drop it for now but wasn’t done talking about it yet, and then looked out onto what was soon to be our battlefield. She was getting nervous again. I tried to help her out with that one last time. “Welcome to playing bait 101.” When I had her attention, I added, “Just remember that you might be playing bait, but that’s all it is – playing. You’re really the spider, and they’re the flies crawling into your web . . . okay?”

Looking a little confused, then somewhat comforted by it, Elena nodded before asking, “What will your cue be?”

“Killing one of them, and that's all you need to know. I don't want you to waste brain capacity trying to figure out who it will be. You've got enough to be thinking about as it is . . . Make sure you’re aware of any that might circle around behind you. Werewolves are good at that, but it always happens when there’s a group of anything eventually. Also, you need to be willing to improvise. If something I said doesn’t happen or you get the sense that something is off, make it up as you go, and I’ll keep up. I’ve got you covered. We may not be on the best of terms right now, but I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Just take it one second at a time, and you’ll be fine.”


	41. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

So far, so good. Elena was standing in the right spot . . . and I hated it. I didn’t use other people as bait. Why had I actually agreed to do this again? I think I must’ve just been badgered enough throughout the course of the day that it seemed easier to give in than argue again, but then me being me, I went over the top with it and had her standing front and center. 

If she didn’t listen to what I’d told her to do this time, then she was screwed. I was irritated with myself for using this as a teachable moment, but even more annoyed with her, because it’s one she desperately needed. I didn’t know if Bonnie’s attempt at persuasion had worked on Jeremy earlier, but it’d better have. Elena needed to go home. I had to have a few days away from her, maybe longer.

I saw her posture straighten, so she hadn’t actually needed to brush her hair back behind her ear the way I’d told her to do to signal that she heard something coming her way. Guess it was time to put her training to use . . . in ways that I had never, ever intended for them to be used. When the group started to trickle out from the trees, I made sure they weren’t anybody we knew. I didn’t recognize any of them. Were there 12? 

I counted . . . 10. Two more, one on each flank of the group emerged a little late, and that was all of them. Guess they’d all come from the same direction. I’d been kind of expecting them to spread out in the woods, form a large ring around the site, and enter from all sides. It was looking less like these were werewolves and more like they vampires. Why would Hayley lie about that? 

They stopped a good distance away from Elena, shared looks with a guy in the middle, and then on his silent direction fanned out a little to form something of an arch. He must be the leader, and since they’d stopped but weren’t all that close when he started to talk to her, Elena, listening to me for once, didn’t respond. He took a couple steps closer. The others followed suit but stayed about a step behind, and this time when he spoke, Elena said something back. 

I couldn’t actually hear anything they were saying, but the guy grinned, chuckled, and then looked to the monsters over his shoulders for validation of something he thought was funny. My guess is that it was Elena telling them to leave or something, because she was not that funny. Yeah, that’s probably what happened, because he immediately dropped the good humor and in a display of intimidation, took another 3 to 4 steps closer to her as he challenged her. The others followed. A few more words from Elena, a couple more steps from him, the rest followed, and since the clearing wasn’t that big, they were just about where I needed them to be. 

I still wasn’t 100% sure what they were, but the bolt I had loaded into my crossbow should work on either species as long as it was a direct hit on the heart. Now to find the monster who was second-in-command. It didn’t matter if it was 3 monsters in a group or 12, there would be one. Without the leader, the others would be lost for a few seconds, then the second-in-command would become the de facto leader, and they’d rally. If they were a tight knit group, then the second-in-command was also the one who was most likely to retaliate first for an attack on their leader. It was the kind of attack done out of pure emotion, because their loyalty to the leader is what usually got them promoted into being second in the first place, so without that person, the others would be thrown into further chaos when Elena took out the leader, and Elena would have twice as much time to get somewhere safe.

The woman who was only half a step behind the leader’s right shoulder but also half a step closer than the others were allowed to be seemed to be my second. Standing on the limb of my tree, I took aim, exhaled, and then pulled the trigger before dropping the crossbow. As the weight from the crossbow was taken by its strap that was hanging from a different branch of the tree, the bolt reached its target. Clean shot. A second later, the bolt exploded in her chest, and completely focused on Elena’s hands to see which grenade she dropped, I reached back for the compound bow hanging from a shortened limb behind me.

Vampires. No time to think about why Hayley would want me as unprepared as possible. The leader briefly looked back at his fallen comrade, and Elena reached forward to snap his neck as I loaded the bow with another modified arrow that’d do the same thing as the bolt – explode from a wooden encased tip after impact. The compound bow was almost as good on accuracy as the crossbow, but what it lacked in that, it made up for in speed, because I could load it a lot faster. A second and then third vampire were dead thanks to that bow by the time the grenade from Elena exploded. 

Elena was able to get just out of range before being caught by one of the others. It grabbed her arm, and these were not newbie vampires based on speed, so I adjusted my aim from being on a different vampire to the one that’d grabbed her, let the arrow fly, and was reaching back to grab another arrow by the time it hit its target. Elena was now able to drop the stake from her sleeve and use it to defend herself against the next vampire that made it to her. I saw a couple of her blocks and decided that she seemed okay. It'd be good practice for her to deal with that vampire on her own, so I re-directed my aim to kill another vampire running towards her and then had to stick the bow on a branch, while I reached behind me to pull my handgun out of the back of my waistband. I’d finally been spotted.

There were 5 vampires left standing minus the one that Elena was currently fighting. Two were starting to turn away from me, so I went for them first. There was no way to know if they were going to run away or if they were going to run and then circle back around to come at me from the back, so they had to go. The ammo I was using today was a modified hollow point designed specifically for vampires, but it was currently a prototype. It also happened to be the only lethal type of round I had in my car at the moment, so it’s what I had to use. In theory, it should work just fine as an explosive round that contained tiny wooden shrapnel, but because of the mixture used to make it an explosive round on impact with a soft target, there was also the potential for it to become an incendiary device if I’d gotten the ratios wrong, which would be less than ideal. The vampire would still die. There’d just be lots of screaming and burning and overall pain, which would make it quite inhumane and unpleasant to everyone involved. 

My first two targets fell in rapid succession without so much as a whimper, so I took that as a sign that the ammo had done what I’d intended, and moved onto the other three vampires, who were all headed in my direction. I hit the furthest away from me in the heart, and as it dropped, I shot the next closest one to me in the head, because it was just a smidge too close and too fast for a shot to the heart when a quicker head shot would do. I didn’t have time to shoot the third vampire. In a move I’d perfected in all my training with Caroline, I flicked the safety on and waited a microsecond for the vampire to leave the ground before jumping over its head as it ascended into the air. Landing in a somersault roll, I looked back in time to see its feet touch down on the branch I’d just been using as my perch. Gun still drawn, off came the safety, and it felt like I had all the time in the world to take my shot. 

As the body dropped out of the tree, I got to my feet, went over to stake the vampire I’d shot in the head, and turned in time to see a very frustrated Elena just take the werewolf grenade, pull the pin, and stuff it in the front pocket of the last vampire. I lifted my arm in front of my eyes to shield them from the light, and when it exploded, Elena was finally standing behind me. Without taking my eyes off the spectacle in front of me, I solemnly said, “Should probably go finish it off.”

It was on the ground, grabbing its chest and howling in pain. Despite the close proximity of the grenade, it’s heart must’ve been left just a little too intact. There were little flames around the pocket that hadn’t had much of a chance to take hold and spread, but it wouldn’t be long before they did, and that vampire needed to die before that happened. I looked back at Elena over my shoulder, and her jaw was clenched. She was refusing eye contact, so I figured she was either averse to killing it or pissed at me about something. Rolling my eyes, I walked over to deal with it myself. When I’d put it out of its misery, Elena finally said, “I thought you said you weren’t going to let anything happen to me.”

I glanced back at her to do a quick assessment. She had some bruises that were already healing. No broken limbs that I could see either, but even if she did, those would heal too. “You look fine to me.”

“You could’ve done something about the one that was attacking me, and you didn’t.”

“I was busy killing the rest!”

“Is this because of what happened earlier?”

“Give me a fucking break. I thought that it’d be good practice for you to get some fighting time in with an actual vampire, and you did really well, or I would’ve killed it a lot sooner. I left it alone, because I thought you could handle it, and you did.” Her features started to soften as her posture relaxed, and I pointed my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of the body before adding, “And using the grenade the way you did was a great move . . . fast thinking . . . I’m almost impressed.”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I’d be more impressed if you’d actually finished the job, but yeah . . . these guys were a lot older than you.”

Looking at the bodies scattering the ground, Elena asked, “How do you know?”

“Their speed. I’d say they were between two and three hundred years old. The leader and the one I shot first might’ve been a little older, but I didn’t get to see them move faster than a human-pace, so I can’t say for sure.”

Still looking out at the battlefield, Elena whispered a hushed, “And you just killed them all in what . . . 5 minutes?” 

When she looked up at me, she seemed perplexed, worried, and a little surprised. “What? This is what I do, and I have been branching out lately, because normal run of the mill vampires are too easy.”

Looking at the bodies again in something that was beginning to resemble awe, she shook her head. “There was nothing easy about this, Eve. You weren’t going to let me help, changed your mind, and then came up with the plan in like a second, and it worked.” Turning her attention back to me, she added, “But it wouldn’t have if you hadn’t been perfect on everything else too. I think I’m starting to understand how you’ve been able to kill 90 monsters . . . I guess it’s over 100 now.”

I didn’t really have a response, so I just blinked a couple of times before turning away from her as I muttered, “Yeah, well you make great bait.”

Catching up to me as I made my way to the leader’s body, she quickly said, “No, I’m serious.”

“I know, and it’s creeping me out a little.” She wasn’t supposed to be impressed. She was supposed to be horrified. The only reason she wasn’t was because she didn’t know any of these vampires.

“What would you have done if I hadn’t been here?”

“Probably waited until a couple went in to investigate the ruins and done basically the same thing – picked them off one by one.”

“So, you really didn’t need my help.”

Not at all. “It was good for you to be able to take what you’ve learned with me and apply it with someone you couldn’t hold back on the way you’d have to do with me.”

We finally made it to the leader’s body, and Elena asked, “Is that why you let me stay?”

“Honestly, it’s been a long day, and I was tired of being hounded by you.”

While I went to the guy’s head, she asked, “So, it had nothing to do with us working together as a team?” 

She seemed hopeful, and I didn’t particularly feel like crushing that at the moment, so I answered, “Sure,” before pointing at the guy’s shoes. “Grab his feet. We need to get him out of here before he wakes up. We can come back and deal with the other bodies when we’re done with him.”

“I can take the top end. It’s probably heavier.”

“I’ll be fine.” 

She was disappointed at my rejection but went to his feet before saying, “Is this you compartmentalizing again?” Lifting under the guy’s arms, I waited for her to get his legs, and she asked, “I mean despite being able to put it aside for this, can I expect for you to go back to not seeming angry with me but saying things that make it sound like you are . . . because of what happened earlier?”

“Probably. I know I don’t want to see you for a few days when we’re done here.”

Her shoulders dropping showed how disheartened she was by that, and then we were joined by a third voice saying, “Well, doesn’t that sound intriguing?”

Shit. I totally forgot to put that dagger back in all the commotion, and now Rebekah was casually standing against the door of the outpost with her arms crossed over her chest. How long she’d been there, I should know, but I didn’t, because I’d been too distracted, which was annoying. I guess that if she’d been a part of Hayley’s plan, that plan had been foiled, so it should be okay now. “I would’ve thought you’d be down a while longer.”

“I suppose I would be under normal circumstances.” It'd taken Elijah several hours to wake up the first time I’d daggered him. The second time hadn’t been nearly that long, but then I’d also taken a while to remove the daggers from his siblings in a house with unknown floorboards and an unsuspecting Klaus just downstairs. Maybe the sounds of me being thrown by the last hybrid were enough to wake him up, or maybe he’d started waking up immediately but hadn’t been able to move until then because he knew something was wrong and pushed himself to do it faster. If that’s what’d happened, then it was possible that something similar happened with Rebekah, what with the exploding arrows, gunshots, and flash grenades, possibly even with all my screaming, but when I was doing that, it would’ve been way too early for her to hear, or it should’ve been. I hoped it was. 

If she had woken up because of anything she heard, and I was almost sure that she had, why did she wait until now to make her presence known, and why would she have stuck around instead of going on her merry way when she finally had her freedom and could leave while everyone else was distracted? Anyway you looked at it, she’d probably been hanging out in and around that doorway for a while, like a voyeur, and I didn’t like the way she was looking at me right now either. I’d wonder if it was because I hadn’t left enough blood, but it wasn’t hunger I saw, more like calculated suspicion. Maybe she was just reflecting back how I was looking at her. Trying to pretend that’s not what she was doing, she stepped out of the doorway before glancing around at her surroundings and casually said, “It looks like you two have been busy.”

I answered, “It was about the only bit of fun I’ve had today,” at the same time Elena rushed out, “They were here for you.” Taking my eyes off of Rebekah, I looked at Elena for more information, and she said, “You were right. Whatever Shane told Hayley to say to them, Rebekah was the bait she used to get them here. They wanted to take her and drop her in the ocean.”

Hm. I glanced at Rebekah. “That’s a little odd, isn’t it? Can’t imagine you would’ve pissed that many people off. You’ve been in a coffin for decades until recently.”

Relaxing somewhat, like she her suspicions had been unfounded, Rebekah sauntered closer saying, “My family has enemies spanning almost ten centuries. It’s hardly that surprising.” Them targeting Rebekah with such vehemence and in such a personal way still seemed off to me even if it was to get at the rest of her famiy, and she was acting a little weird. She should’ve said at least one thing to antagonize Elena by now, shouldn’t she? As she got to us, she took a curious look at the vampire we were carrying, and then focused on me. “I suppose I have you to thank for me being awake right now?”

“You didn’t get my message?”

Glancing back at the outpost, she said, “Brunch tomorrow at yours? I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it.”

“I’m making waffles. I’m also supposed to be teaching Elena how to make them, so it’ll probably be at least mildly entertaining.”

“And you thought you’d just invite me along?”

Sounding somewhat annoyed, Elena answered, “I didn’t know anything about her inviting you, but I assume it has something to do with talking to April. She’s worried about you.”

“Why would she be worried about me?”

Elena answered that one too, but in a very condescending way, like she thought it should be obvious. “Because you told her you’d help her find out what happened to her Dad and then just disappeared.”

“Right.” Turning back to me, Rebekah sighed. “I suppose I should make that up to her . . . right after I pay this Shane a visit. He seems to have become quite the thorn in my side.”

Waving that off, I muttered, “Don’t bother. I erased his memories tonight.” 

Her eyebrows arched, like she’d known that, was annoyed by it, and had just been waiting for me to admit it. “And how did you do that?”

Seriously, how long had she been awake? “I, uh,” I glanced at Elena, and she shrugged. Why did it feel like I was about to get scolded by Rebekah of all people? “Well, what’s the point of embodying a necromancer’s magic if you can’t put it to good use?”

Rebekah’s eyes narrowed. “And in the process made it so much worse.”

What the fuck did it matter to her? “I’m fine enough to make waffles in a few hours, so I think I’ll live.” 

She immediately backed down. “Yeah, well, you look like you’ve been through hell.”

“That’s because I literally have.” She started to smirk, and I added, “And tonight was worse, but it’s not over yet. We’ve got to take this body somewhere else to kill it before it wakes up, so I guess we’ll see you tomorrow, or not. Good night, Rebekah.” She was weirding me out, so I nodded for Elena to start moving the body with me in the direction of my car, but Rebekah came with us saying, “Before you go . . . ” 

I stopped and huffed out a sigh in frustration, because this vampire was starting to get heavy, and we’d already wasted enough time. “What is it now?”

“I need you to put that dagger back where you found it.”

I didn’t say it, but Elena voiced my confusion perfectly, “What?!”

Rebekah looked from Elena to me and said, “I woke up out of sorts, so I need you to kill me again. Think of it as a reset button.”

I guess if something had gone wrong with her resurrection, that might explain the strange vibe I was getting from her. “Fine. If it’s what you want, I will, but it’s gonna have to wait until – “

“I’m afraid it can’t wait.”

“Well, it has to wait. I don’t even have any white oak ash on me. It’s in my car.”

“So go get it.”

Nodding for Elena to start moving again, I didn’t even try to hide my annoyance as I said, “I will, just as soon as we get him there.”

Moving with us again, Rebekah asked, “How long is that going to take?”

“I don’t know. 10 minutes?”

“I don’t have 10 minutes!”

“You had 2 minutes to waste acting like a freaking weirdo. You can wait another 10.”

“Just leave him here.”

Stopping again, I glared at her as my frustration turned to mild anger. “For fuck’s sake! Read the fucking room. I am in no mood to put up with anyone else’s bullshit tonight. We were already in the middle of something when you decided to let your presence be known, and while he’s not dead yet, he does need to die, so back off, and I’ll give you what you want in my own damn time.”

Did she do what I said and read the fucking situation, give me space, and decide to wait 10 more minutes? No. Expending any good will I had towards her, she stepped up to me, and the black lines under her eyes briefly made an appearance, as she growled, “I said, leave him!”

Fuck this, and fuck her. Through gritted teeth, I snarled, “And I said no! As the lone human here who can dagger you, I am telling you to knock it off, or I’m gonna make you wait until after he’s fucking dead.”

Oh, she didn’t like that at all. “You want him dead? Fine!” Reaching forward with the full speed and strength of an Original at her disposal, she grabbed onto his head, cranked it once to the left, once to the right, and just popped it off, like it was nothing. The only thing I could even do about it was close my eyes a quarter of a second before the blood splatter shot across my face and chest. 

Elena released the breath she’d been holding in a soft shriek of defeat, and dropping the headless torso, my eyes opened, the murderous glint of a predator on full display in a way that I rarely let happen outside of a hunt. As I turned to stand toe-to-toe with Rebekah, she was matching me with a similar look of her own. “It looks like he’s dead, so how about you run along and get that white oak ash?” 

“Now I see the family resemblance. Never have you reminded me more of your brother.”

Her features softened somewhat, and she took half a step back, but she also didn’t take her eyes off of me. “You can keep it . . . the dagger. It’s yours if you do this for me.” I didn’t respond, and she tried again. “My brother doesn’t need to know about it. Just dagger me and take it right back out. You deserve something for what you’ve done here tonight.” Looking around at the battlefield, she came back at me with almost an apologetic look, and I slowly backed down before rolling my eyes. 

Taking my anger out on the head near my feet, I punted it into the woods. It hit a tree, bounced back, and then made Elena jump when it nearly hit her. That almost cheered me up a bit. “Stay here . . . If she wasn’t there eavesdropping long enough to know it already, tell her the part she just played in completing another step in the roadmap that will bring back all the dead enemies her family has too.”

“It’s over?”

“Yeah . . . pretty sure it is. We just have to keep anything else from happening. It should be easier to do if Shane stays out of the way, and you’re gonna have to work extra hard on getting Bonnie into witch rehab.”

I took my time and made it to the car and back without the weight of a body in exactly 10 minutes. When I got back to them, Rebekah seemed to have known I’d done it intentionally, was half amused by it and half annoyed. As I approached her, she started to say something, but dropping the already prepared dagger from my sleeve, I didn’t wait for her to get another word in before grabbing her shoulder for leverage and thrusting the blade into her heart. She lurched forward with a sudden gasp, and I let her body carelessly fall before going to pick up the head and the arm of the headless vampire, so I could drag the body towards the grave. I'd get the dagger back when we were leaving.

Following me, Elena asked what I was doing. “Getting rid of the bodies. We’ll dump them in the grave and set them on fire using the gasoline I left in the outpost earlier. The confined space should make them burn a little hotter, and when it dies out, we can just cover what’s left of them up with dirt.”

“You’re mad?”

“Pretty angry, yeah.” 

“That’s what I thought. Do you feel sick?” I glanced back at her, and she said, “Any knives in the stomach or anything?” 

Now that she mentioned it. I did a self-assessment and started to shake my head. “No. Does it feel cold around me?”

“A little, yeah, but that could just be because we’re out here, and it’s winter, so it must be cold, right?”

“Well, can you usually feel the cold?”

“No, but . . . what if it’s gone, Eve? What if you’re okay now?”

“I guess I’ll have to run some experiments when I get home, but I still felt sick between waking up and killing the revenant, so where did it go if it did leave me? It has an uncanny ability to survive at all costs.”

“Maybe your loophole confused it so much that it just self-destructed?”

“Or what if it’s in Shane or the corpse?” 

She looked over my shoulder in the direction of the grave and said, “If it went into Connor’s body, then maybe it happened when you collapsed on top of him. If we burn the body, that could get rid of it, and if that’s not where it is . . . I should probably call Bonnie to make sure she doesn’t touch Shane.”

“I’d say it’s probably too late for that. She would’ve checked him over when he came back.” Her eyes widened with worry, and I felt the need to alleviate that somewhat, “But maybe the rules are changed going forward now. If it has marked her as its next victim, then we have until she dies to figure out how to get her out of it, or maybe it won’t even happen unless he kills her with his bare hands, the way I killed him.”

Pulling my phone out of her pocket, because she’d apparently decided to keep it when she had to give me her blood, Elena found Bonnie’s number saying, “I’ll call her and tell her to just take him to the boarding house. We can keep him in one of the cells in the basement until we’re sure.”


	42. Sisters United

Walking up to the boarding house, Elena quietly said, “So, I guess I’ll stay at my house tonight and then go back out to the cabin tomorrow to see Jeremy.”

“Is he – “

She nodded. “Trying persuasion with Bonnie seems to have worked. He was actually able to give me a hug.” 

Approaching the door, I muttered, “At least something good happened today.”

“A lot that was good happened today, Eve . . . And you should know that when you do start training Jer, I won’t get in your way if that’s what it takes for him to be even half as good as you are.”

“So, what, you just needed a demonstration of my skills first?”

She shrugged before admitting, “I guess seeing really is believing.”

“Yeah, well . . . you should probably go home and get some sleep. It’s been a long day." 

Before my hand reached the doorknob, the door swung open, and there were two Salvatore brothers blocking the way. “We need to talk.”

I grumbled a surly, “Great,” and Stefan looked at Elena before adding, “To both of you.”

As I brushed past them, Elena asked, “Now? Eve’s pretty tired, and - ” and Stefan answered, “I think we should.”

Of course he did. Based on what I’d seen in my rear view mirror, the rims of my eyes were red from exhaustion. I had black coating my face from the tears and frothing at the mouth that happened during my exorcism, blood from the final vampire was splattered on top of that and all over my shirt, and I still had the goo left behind from the rotting corpse on my jeans and forearms, but sure, let’s talk now. Stalking into the living room, I plonked down on the couch I’d been eating cereal on just this morning, and a more trepidatious Elena carefully sat next to me. Damon sat across from her on the couch opposite ours, and Stefan sat across from me. Interesting choice on their part. There had to be some tactical reason behind it.

Bonnie had been here, right? They knew about Shane. If this was about that, then i didn't want to hear it. Before they could speak, I decided to go on offence first. “You can start by telling us what you two did today.” Whatever it was had played right into Shane and Hayley's hands. I was sure of it. 

The brothers shared a look while I slouched back, arms crossed over my chest, in the stereotypical pose adopted by most rebellious teenagers when they were about to get a lecture. Stefan took the lead. “That’s a fair question, and we’ll get to that, but first – “

“Nope. You want us to hear what you have to say, then start with that, Invisible Man.” 

I was half expecting Elena to nudge my arm to make me behave, but to my surprise, she took up a pose nearly identical to mine that looked a little more like she was expecting an answer to my question than ‘I’m not going to play ball with you,’ the way I did, but the optics were essentially the same, and it was apparent that we were a united front. The brothers shared another look, and Damon got up saying, “I’m gonna need a drink . . . You want one?”

With a soft sigh, Stefan went back and forth between Elena and I, like he was trying to see who the easier mark would be before saying, “Yeah, I think I do.” Ha. Score one for the Gilbert girls. “Okay.” Casting me a brief look, he added, “We’ll do this your way. The truth is that we spent most of today finally doing something about Klaus.”

Unfurling her arms as she sat up a little straighter, Elena quickly said, “Klaus?! Why is this the first we’re hearing about it?” 

Coming back with two tumblers and a bottle, Damon handed one of the glasses to Stefan on his way back to his seat saying, “You’re one to talk, Miss Indignant. Bonnie stopped by here to drop off The Forgetful Professor, and I’d say the day you two had tops ours.” Flicking his hand in my direction, he rolled his eyes and sarcastically added, “Not that it’s written all over my girlfriend’s face or anything.”

Placing her hands on her knees, Elena looked at me over her shoulder, and playing coy retorted, “Well, personally, I think that you look like the epitome of empowerment.” 

I wasn’t Caroline or Bonnie, so I didn’t know how to play off of that. I mean, I’m sure I could work up some faux-outrage, like Caroline, about how they didn’t trust us to make our own decisions blah, blah, blah, and flip this back around on them, the way I think she wanted, but mostly, I was too tired to do anyone other than me. “If looking like a speed freak, who fell in a tar pit and then got thrown into a truck full of roadkill, is empowerment, then sure.” 

Her lips pursed together as she tried not to laugh. “That's actually a pretty accurate description of how you look right now and how we both must smell.” After a short snort, she added, “But I also know what you did to look this way, and I happen to think that’s empowering.” Glancing at the brothers, she worked up a little of her own faux-outrage and said, “So, if what you’re looking for is some kind of apology, then I’m not sorry Eve and I did our own thing today, and since I doubt you’re sorry for not telling us what you were doing either, then I’d say we’re done here.” 

She started to move, like she was about to get up, and Stefan quickly said, “It’s not that we didn’t want you to know.“

Lounging back against the couch, Damon lifted his drink in my direction as he said, “We just didn’t want one of you screw everything up.” 

Damon might be playing it cool, but he was seething underneath it all, and it was mostly directed at me. Elena caught the hint of it in his eyes and leaned ever so slightly closer to me before saying, “Whatever you tried to do didn’t work, and you think it’s Eve’s fault, but she didn’t have anything to do with Klaus. I was with her all day.“ 

Not all day, and I had gone somewhere Hayley had said they didn’t want me going just before Elena came clomping through the woods with Bonnie. Sitting forward, Stefan focused his attention on Elena as he said, “See, that’s the thing. We think you guys might have done something without knowing it. Alice thought of a way to get in touch with Imelda, and - “

“Are you saying that Imelda was here today?!”

I guess that was the beauty of having a twin. She could say things I was thinking in the tone of voice I’d use, and I didn’t have say anything at all. It allowed me to maintain the appearance of being aloof. As their apparent spokesman, Stefan took the question. “Yeah, but today took a lot out of her. She’s resting up at your house.”

Elena quickly looked at me. “Maybe we could have her check you out in the morning?” 

Maybe. If she was still here and didn’t kill my sister in the meantime, then I’d consider seeing her, but I was decidedly less enthusiastic about it than Elena. After what I’d been put through tonight, I mainly saw Imelda being here as an opportunity that’d been ripped away from me in the most brutal of ways rather than one that would do any good now. My answer was a shrugged shoulder, and Elena huffed out a sigh before focusing on Stefan, but before she said anything, I asked, “How did Alice get in touch with her?”

“Uh,” Stefan looked back at Damon, before turning to me and said, “She might’ve remembered telling Imelda about the witches you took her to see, and – “

“She’s been with Aja’s coven.” My eyebrow quirked up as I looked at Elena, and she briefly bowed her head. “Looks like Aja would have known a witch that was closer, huh?” 

She chanced an apologetic look at me before turning back to Stefan. “Why was Imelda here? What did you have her do?”

Damon took that one. “Oh, it was all part of the plan that Blondie put together, and we thought of everything too, didn’t we brother?”

Stefan nodded before looking back at Elena as he said, “Everything. With you being at the lake house – “

Sounding annoyed, Elena, interrupted him. “How did you know that’s where we were?” 

With a sigh, Stefan answered, “Caroline talked to Bonnie, and she mentioned that you were there.”

I was calling bullshit on that one. Caroline wouldn’t have called Bonnie today for a chat after what happened last night, and for all her faults, Bonnie wouldn’t have done what she did tonight if she’d known what they were doing, because she would’ve known that Imelda was nearby. “Nope. Try again.”

Again the two brothers shared a look, and Damon smirked, like he’d warned him. It was obvious now that Stefan didn’t know how to deal with me, but he’d still wanted to be the face of whatever this coordinated attack was. He thought he was more compassionate, and maybe he was when he wasn’t acting like a ripper, but he was also the least trustworthy of the two. He lied more than anyone else I knew. He lied to himself almost every second of every day about who he really was, and he lied to everyone all the time in the name of being kindhearted or protective, whatever it was, he was always lying, so of course I'd be on the lookout for it more with him, and whether he knew it or not, he'd just blown it. Why would I listen to a word he had to say when he couldn’t even get this far into the conversation without being dishonest? 

After silently being asked by Stefan to tag in on responding to me, Damon dragged his smug eyes from his brother, and briefly flicked a dismissive look in my general direction before saying, “Who was it again who taught Blondie how to track and trace a phone? You really only have yourself to blame on that one."

Had Stefan seriously been lying to protect Caroline from me? What'd he think? That I was going to harm her in some way or hold it against her? I mostly respected the hell out of her, because she'd outplayed me on keeping where I was hidden, and from the sounds of it, she'd outplayed Klaus too. That girl never got enough credit as far as I was concerned.

Not liking the muted hostility coming my way from Damon’s side of the couch, and possibly misinterpreting my silence as something other than anger with Stefan, Elena placed her hand on my knee in comfort. “Nobody’s blaming anyone. I just wanted to know how you knew, so if we can move past it, I’d like to know what happened today.”

I just wanted to go to bed, and because they were preventing me from going there, I decided to steal their thunder on the big reveal. “They put him in Rebekah.” No matter how annoyed he was with me, Damon couldn’t help glancing at his brother with a look of pride, but before either of them confirmed it, Elena asked what I meant, so I elaborated, “I mean that they essentially did what we did by putting the Snake into Connor, but with traditional magic.”

Sounding defeated, Elena stated, “So what you said about it being possible with Imelda was really possible.”

“Yeah, and I hope that makes you feel worse, but you’re missing the point.” Glancing briefly in her direction, I added, “Not that it’s easy to see. I didn’t exactly say why Hayley called. It was just to tell me that Rebekah was in that outpost on the Lockwood’s estate and that everyone in town was saying, ‘Don’t tell, Eve.’ It was obvious to me that she wanted me in that location on short notice because of the sacrifice. At first I thought that since the professor called me the phantom huntress and told Hayley I killed that pack, that she was sending werewolves there with the promise of a chance at revenge or just something to do on a Saturday night and that Rebekah being there was how she’d planned to get me where she needed the sacrifice to be, so that’s what I was focused on when I removed Rebekah’s dagger, because I was like, you know what? Alec said Rebekah would be a good ally to have, and it’d be easier to talk to April tomorrow if Rebekah is there, so I’ll just let her go while it’s fresh in my mind. It wasn’t until after I got my weapons and heard you and Bonnie in the woods that I thought maybe Rebekah was part of plan for the sacrifice, because there were too many unanswered questions - "

"Like what kind of monster was actually going to be there?"

I gave Elena a slight nod and said, "Exactly. So I was going to put the dagger back.”

My eyes briefly flitted away from Elena, as I considered one of my biggest questions of the night. “She wasn’t expecting me to think her sending me there had anything to do with the sacrifice, because she thought she did a good enough job selling me on her switching sides last night, and I must've done a good enough job of making her think I bought it . . . But she had to have known exactly where I was if Caroline showed her how to find my phone. That's why she called me of all people to help her out."

I paused to reflect on how sneaky of an asshole that made her before saying, "I'm guessing the professor told her at some point that it takes an Original time to wake up after one of the daggers is removed, or maybe she heard it somewhere else. Either way, she knew that too when she called me. She thought she'd drop me a line, make me think she was doing me a favor by telling me something that the others didn’t want me to know, and I'd either being sitting around waiting for Rebekah to wake up or be tired of waiting and gone by the time the vampires showed up to take the body away. Klaus would take care of the rest."

"But then you ruined her plan by seeing right through it."

That wasn't entirely true. I'd missed that Hayley knew where I was when she called. It may not have changed the overall outcome, but it was an oversight on my part, so there was a possibility that it could have changed everything. I glanced at Elena again. I doubted that she knew what was bothering me, but she seemed to know something was and felt the need to make me feel better about it for some reason. 

I didn't want to dwell on it right now though. I'd dissect where I'd gone wrong later after I'd had some sleep, so I could prevent a vital piece of information like that from getting by me again in the future. "So she revised it. If I had the wrong weapons and a plan for the wrong kind of monster, then she thought that I wouldn't have a means to defend myself, thereby turning me into a damsel in distress, something she thought Klaus would take care of for me thanks to Alice saying last night that Klaus and Katherine were probably as protective of me as she is.”

There’d been two fatal flaws in that plan. A) I was too resourceful to have ever been truly caught off guard, especially when I was in a forest full of wood, had my indestructible stake, and always carried vervain. It grated on the very last nerve I had that she'd think I wouldn't be up to it. B) Klaus had been pissed off at what the others had done and thought I was in on it, so he wouldn’t have done anything about me being ambushed. What was my proof of that? There was a good chance he saw what Bonnie did to me tonight, and he had to have thought I deserved it, or he wouldn't have let it continue. It wasn't until he realized I hadn’t known what the others did that he got annoyed with me for putting myself in that situation, and the thought that he'd been a witness to what happened made me feel even angrier about it.

I noticed that Damon had gotten a lot less high and mighty. I hadn’t gone out of my way to help Klaus on purpose, and the thought that I had is probably what had upset him more than anything, but while he might’ve gotten calmer, I'd gotten more irritated. It’s not like I’d been entirely tricked. I’d been prepared for vampires and werewolves, but I’d also done what Hayley wanted by freeing Klaus, and without knowing it was him, I'd handled him all wrong, so he'd killed the last vampire needed for the sacrifice. Losing the battle over the sacrifice irked me more than almost anything else that'd happened. It was like salt to the wounds inflicted on me by Bonnie with the encouragement of Elena. Noticing my anger was building again, Elena gave me a faint smile and said, “Well, you proved her wrong on that one. You were anything but in need of rescue.” 

“Yeah, well for thinking I would be, I’m gonna punch her in the face the next time I see her.”

“Are you going to kill her?”

“Who knows? Depends on how long it takes me to find her; what problems she’s created along the way; and what she’s doing when I do find her.”

“So when we were talking to Rebekah, we were actually talking to Klaus?” I nodded, and Elena’s eyes widened as she said, “That’s how you talked him down when he lost his temper with you. You said she’d never reminded you more of her brother . . . He was in somebody else’s body, and on some level, you still recognized him. Now I bet he likes you even more. He even said you could keep her dagger.” 

“Yeah, well, I’m fairly certain he isn’t going to be daggering any of his siblings for a while now that someone’s finally attempted to do something like this and it worked. If he was technically as dead as Rebekah, I bet those vampires who showed up for the body were the ones he had compelled at his house, because there hasn’t been any new vampire activity around here that can't be attributed to them. It’s different than when Alec’s Dad staked him. That time, he just jumped from one body to another, so he didn’t die in any way, but this time, I’m guessing there are vampires all over world who are no longer compelled by him . . . That’s going to be a bitch for him to deal with now.” No wonder he’d been in a hurry to get back to his own body, and now he was going to be worse about wanting to find this cure, wasn’t he?

“So, when you killed him again . . . He went back into his own body?” 

“That would be my guess.” 

For an answer, we looked to the brothers who’d been watching our interaction, one in mild amusement and the other with growing worry. Damon opened his mouth to answer, but worry won out first as Stefan quickly said, “You guys get that he’s going to be out for blood now, right? None of us are safe.”

“Actually, I’d say that Elena and I are. It was pretty obvious that we didn’t have a clue what you guys were doing.” 

Stefan focused on Elena with the unspoken question of whether she thought that was right, and she nodded. Turning to me, she said, “Maybe we can use the vampire convention to let him know we’re all going to work extra hard at getting him what he wants.”

“You mean the cure?” She nodded, and I asked, “What about Silas?”

“If he even exits, then this seems like more of an immediate threat. Maybe Imelda can help us get it without raising Silas.”

Even exists?! “If Expression is what’s needed in any way, then she can’t do it, and Bonnie needs to get Expression out of her system as soon as possible. That’s what Imelda should be focusing on if she’s here.”

“You can’t just bluff Klaus.”

“I didn’t say anything about bluffing, because I didn’t bring up offering a trade. To be honest, if he even shows up to that convention now, it’ll be to kill the others, so you’d better hope he doesn’t.”

“And if he doesn’t show up?”

“Then, he’s giving himself time to cool off.”

“Or plotting his revenge.”

“Elena, he doesn’t need to plot anything. He could walk through the front door tomorrow night and kill everyone so fast that there’s nothing anyone could do to stop him except for maybe Alice, and really, she’d just be able to slow him down some, but the first thing I’d tell her to do is run, because one bite is all it’ll take.”

“Can you even hear yourself right now? You’re talking about how he could kill everyone, and somehow you think he won’t.“

“Because he hasn’t yet, and every one of us, including me, has given him plenty of reasons to do it, which means he doesn’t want to do it for one reason or another. At worst, he’ll be an annoying bully but behave for the most part until he gets what wants, and then he’ll kill everyone. All that means is that he can’t get what he wants, so we’ll have to stall until he finds legitimate reasons not to go after anyone, like the fact that he’s got a little more than a crush on Caroline. Imelda proved how strong she is against him, so he won’t go near her if he can avoid it. The same would be true of Alice if she were to light him up with a lightning bolt from a distance or throw him into a tornado. I doubt Matt had anything to do with it, and Bonnie didn’t either, so as long as they stay out of sight, they’ll be out of his mind. He needs Jeremy for the hunter’s mark, so he should be fine. That leaves these two and Tyler as the most vulnerable, but he still thinks of Stefan as a friend. While I’m sure that hasn’t stopped him in the past from killing people, for some reason, it’s different with Stefan. Must’ve been one hell of a wing man in the 20's with all the chances he keeps getting. Damon will probably be okay for the same reason I get to keep the dagger. That really just leaves Tyler, but he’s the last hybrid left.”

“Funny you should mention Tyler.”

I looked at Damon, and Stefan finished his brother’s thought. “After the vague messages you two left on Imelda’s voicemail, we decided to leave Klaus’s body at Tyler’s and get rid of it tomorrow, so we could go look for you. Just before you got back here, we got a call from Caroline. As soon as Klaus came back, he must’ve gone for the first person he saw . . . Carol is dead.”

Elena’s shoulders fell, and I could relate. I felt bad for Tyler and like I should go over there, but I might just be the last person he wanted to see when it became apparent that I was involved. I’d been directly or indirectly involved in the deaths of his entire family, from my Dad getting his Dad killed to me actually killing Mason and now this with his Mom. 

That didn’t mean it was my fault, because Klaus was his own agent of chaos, who had done the actual killing, but grief had a strange way of distorting reality, so I’d understand if Tyler blamed me for it. “I take it he was fairly involved because of Klaus’s feelings for Caroline. Killing Carol was spontaneous, but there’s also some logic to it. If Klaus wanted to punish Tyler, the worst thing he could do was kill his Mom and leave Tyler as the last remaining member of his family, so he won’t kill Tyler now . . . as long as Tyler keeps his mouth shut around him, which he isn’t going to want to do.”

“Did you hear what I said? Carol Lockwood is dead.”

“Yeah, and I’ve had time to process it, add it into my calculations, and move on, so I can figure out a good strategy to fix what was broken today.”

Leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees, Stefan’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “You knew her, and that’s all you have to say about it?”

“What else am I supposed to say?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you could ask if Tyler’s okay?”

“Of course he’s not okay. His Mom just died.”

“Then how about, I’m sorry.”

“For what? Klaus killed her.”

“After you let him go!”

“Which is actually the only reason that anyone here has a chance at surviving this. You don’t think Elijah would’ve come looking for his siblings eventually? Always and forever means something to him. Or how do you even know that dagger would’ve stayed where it was? Did you honestly think it’d to be able to hold two Original’s souls in place indefinitely? Klaus isn't just powerful because of what he is, he’s incredibly strong-willed, so who is to say that he couldn’t have eventually pulled it out himself, especially if he was sharing half the burden of being trapped by it with his sister? He woke up awfully damn fast after I took it out – sooner than he let us know he had – and depending on how long it would’ve taken for him to remove the dagger himself and if he was in the ocean when it happened, then this entire town would be burned to the ground and all the people killed right along with it as soon as he found his body, and if you got rid of it in the meantime, then it’d be 10x worse. He’d wipe every close and distant member of the founding families off the map all across this country, plus their friends.” Stefan looked back over his shoulder at Damon, and I added, “So, tell me again how y’all thought of everything, because I don’t think you did.” Neither of them immediately responded, and I shook my head in disappointment. “As annoying as it is, and as much sympathy as I feel for Tyler, we’re all lucky I did what I did tonight.” 

“Lucky?! If you can’t bring yourself to care about Carol dying – “

He was starting to really piss me off now. “You hardly knew her. I spent a lot more time with her than you ever did.”

“Which is exactly my point!” 

I rolled my eyes, “Okay, well, this is conversation is getting circular, and I can see that I’m the only practical one here. I’m going to bed.”

I went to get up, and Stefan said, “I’m sorry, but this isn’t working out.” 

Was he kicking me out? Elena spoke first. “What’s not working out?”

Clasping his hands together, Stefan nodded in the direction of the two of us and said, “This . . . You two have tried, but – “

Elena stopped him from finishing. “Us?! I’m sorry that Carol is dead, but Eve’s right. You can hardly blame us for – “

“It’s not just that. Look at what Eve talked you into today, Elena. You helped her murder someone. That isn’t who you are.”

“Maybe it is.” 

“No, it’s not. That has Eve’s name written all over it, and you would never – “

“She brought him back.”

“At what cost?” Stefan shook his head and then glanced back at me. “Look at her and tell me she’s okay.” 

When he returned to Elena, she said, “She’s stronger than anyone thinks she is.”

“Maybe she is, but – “

“No buts, Stefan. She just is. She killed 11 vampires in less than 5 minutes tonight, and that was after everything that happened with Bonnie.”

Watching the entire debate, Damon finally asked, “And what’d you do?”

“I played bait even though she probably didn’t need me to do anything.”

“So, you helped her?” 

Elena nodded. “And I have no idea how she was doing that at 15 . . . actually that’s when she got promoted to hunting solo, so she was doing it for who knows how long before that, but it was terrifying.”

She glanced at me, and Stefan tried again. “You mean she dangled you in front of 11 – “

“12.”

Undeterred, Stefan said, “12 vampires by yourself, and – “

“I wasn’t by myself. Eve was there.”

“Maybe. But she put you in danger. Tell me how that’s good for you?“

This new topic was so far out of left field that it didn’t make a whole lot of sense . . . until it did, and then you could say my anger that had already been brewing got whipped up into a nice quiet fury. This wasn’t about Carol or letting Klaus go. It was about the sire bond. They hadn’t found anything different than I had about how to break it. Damon was going to have to invoke it to set Elena free and then never see her again. He’d obviously want me to go with him if he had to leave but knew I wouldn’t want to go until I had tied up all the loose ends in town, which is why they’d tried to get rid of Klaus today, and if Damon left, then Stefan wanted me to go with him too, either because he thought I was good for Damon, or he didn’t think Damon would leave without me.

Rather than force Elena and I apart, they’d decided that the best way to separate us was by focusing on how it’d be for the best if we parted ways so we’d do it willingly and not be as broken up about it. It meant they were trying to make us believe we were bad for one another or a detriment to others, like Carol, who Stefan had been hoping I’d feel guilty enough about to hear him out on the rest, but I wasn’t accepting responsibility for that, and that’s why he’d decided to just spring the main point he’d wanted to get across on us. In some ways Elena and I were bad for each other, but focusing on that wasn’t a fair way to split us up. Look at how screwed up their relationship was. No family was perfect, and Elena and I were still sisters at the end of the day. 

While the debate between Elena and Stefan continued, I heard Damon ask, “Hey, Eve? What are you doing right now?” Instead of answering him, I remained focused on Stefan, who had started to look uncomfortable. He sat back and subconsciously rubbed his hands together before wrapping his arms around him to stave off a chill, and then Damon was crouching in front of me. “Eve, look at me.” I flicked my eyes to his, and he gave me a brief smile. “Rough night?” I nodded, and he asked, “Feel betrayed?”

“And furious.”

“Do you trust me?”

He’d been in on this with Stefan from the start, and I’d be willing to bet that it’d been his idea to convince us we were bad for one another. He’d probably been thrilled to find an ally who agreed with him about that, except Stefan was coming at it from the perspective of thinking that I was bad for Elena rather than the other way around. If it served his purposes, he hadn’t cared about the details, particularly when he’d been angry with me, but over the course of our discussion that anger had subsided, and he’d gone awfully quiet. “Tell me whose idea it was.”

After a brief pause, he licked his bottom lip and admitted, “Mine . . . Pretty sure you already know why. Give me a chance to fix it.”

“No more games.”

“I’ve got nothing but truth in mind.” That didn’t mean he wasn’t about to play a game, but I gave him a reluctant nod anyway. He looked pretty worried. Staying where he was in front of me, but turning his head to look at Elena, he asked, “Elena, what you do think about Eve?”

Stefan quickly tried to intervene. “Damon – “

Yes, he was about to invoke the sire bond, but if it resolved this nonsense one way or the other, then I was willing to let it go. Putting his hand up to signal for Stefan to stop, Damon glanced back at him over his shoulder. “Just hear her out.” Turning back to Elena, he added, “I want the truth. Don’t say what you think I want to hear or what you think she wants to hear or Stefan or anyone else. I really want to know what you think. No matter what it is, it’ll make me happy as long as it’s the truth.”

Elena tossed me a cautious look before sighing as she said, “I think she comes from a different world than me, but I don’t think it’s all because her world was a supernatural one and mine wasn’t growing up. I think it’s mostly that she’s in a world of her own. Monster, hunter, human – she calls herself all three, and since I moved in with her, I’ve noticed that she also calls herself a hybrid sometimes. It’s not because she doesn’t know who she is. She does. I think that’s just what it means to be really, truly special – you can’t ever really belong anywhere - but the thing that she never waivers on or questions is when she says I’m her sister, so as much as I want to understand her, I know that if I never do, it won’t change what me being her sister means to her. I’ve never had anyone get as angry with me as she does or as often. She’s mad at me right now, but I know that no matter how much she doesn’t want to see me tomorrow, she will if I call to remind her that we’re both supposed to be having brunch with April, and she’ll teach me how to make waffles the way she said she would, and there’s no doubt in my mind that if I was in real danger, she’d do everything she could to be there no matter how much she hated me. It doesn’t matter if it’s not what I ever thought having a sister would be like, that’s what family is.”

Damon shared a look with Stefan when she was done, and Stefan shook his head. “That doesn’t change – “

Damon’s eyebrows arched, as he said, “We’re gonna have to rethink this.”

“Damon, no. We agreed – “

“Considering it took both of us to stop her sister from giving us a taste of what it’s like at the Arctic Circle, I’m changing my mind, but if that’s still not enough for you, then listen to what she’s saying.” Going back to Elena, he tried again, “If that’s what you think, how does Eve make you feel, Elena? I want the truth.”

“Scared.” Elena paused before clarifying. “I’m afraid I’m going to push her too far one day, and she’ll leave, or she’ll die, and I’m afraid that if she does die, it’ll be because of me. I used to be afraid that she’d die because she’s a hunter, but after tonight, I feel better about that. She made it look so easy . . . I feel proud of her even though she doesn’t want to hear it, and it makes me sad that she doesn’t. Guilty. When I woke up in the car, water was pouring in, and I couldn’t wake Matt up. I did forget about her. I didn’t remember until we got back to my house when I was in transition and saw you, and after you left, I saw her, and . . . I felt awful. It must’ve seemed like I don’t care about her, but I do, and what makes it worse is that I’ve said and done horrible things to her. I don’t know why. Maybe she’s right. Maybe before I turned it was because I felt like she was trying to take something from me that wasn’t hers to take.” 

Her eyes darted from Damon to me. “And now it’s because I can’t stand the thought that she might think I don’t like her or want her in my life, because that’s not true, and I’m afraid she doesn’t know that because of how I’ve acted. I just want things between us to be good, and when they aren’t, or I think someone else gets to know parts of her that I don’t, it makes me angry, and I take it out on her, but I’ve been working really hard on it.” 

Looking at Stefan, she shook her head before saying, “And she didn’t have to convince me of anything today. All she wanted was to know where Bonnie was. I’m the one who said I wasn’t letting her go without me even after she tried to scare me off by telling me what she was planning to do, and she gave me plenty of chances to walk away after that. She didn’t want me involved tonight with the vampires either, but I’m as stubborn as she is, maybe more, and I hate that she doesn’t trust me. I wanted her to see that she could, and Shane is still alive, so it worked out the way she said it would . . . I was a little annoyed when I heard that she did it so she could erase his memories of his family, but I guess she probably thinks that if he doesn’t remember his loss, then he won’t kill anybody else, and something needed to be done about him. He’s done so many bad things, and there’s no way to hold him to account when he can’t be arrested for hypnotizing someone. I wish it could’ve been different, but I feel like she was right about it being the most humane solution that we had.”

Sighing, she came back to me and finally said, “And I used to get irritated with you, because you act like you’re older than me even though we’re the same age, and it felt like you treated me like I’m an annoying little sister. I think you even called me ‘little sister’ last night when you were angry about the light bulb, but after tonight, I think I understand why. I thought I knew a lot more than I did about all of this, but the truth is I don’t know anything at all, and you’re trying to give me guidance. I’d do the same, because I know it can’t be easy to navigate going from living alone to being part of even a small town, like Mystic Falls, or going to high school or being a cheerleader, but I feel like you go to Caroline on things like that. Sometimes it feels like she’s your sister instead of me, and I know she feels like she should be. That’s how much I get this wrong sometimes, but I want to get better.”

“Yeah, I’m not doing this.” Elena and I looked at Damon, but he was talking to Stefan.

“Damon, you said you’d – “

“I know what I said, but I won’t make Eve choose.”

“Is that because you don’t think she’ll choose you, or – “

There was probably a lot of truth in what Stefan had just said, but he didn’t have to be a dick about it. “You know what I choose? Myself, which means I’ll go with Damon, because that’s what I want to do, but not until it’s the right time, and now’s not it. Klaus’s quick temper and the immediate need he has to lash out the way he did with Carol might come from him being half-werewolf, but just like every other vampire, he gets a thrill from the chase, and a chase is what it will become in his mind for anyone who leaves, regardless of why they’re actually leaving, so everyone is staying put for now. Plus, I want to help Elena with becoming a vampire, and Jeremy needs me to train him.”

Damon looked noticeably more relaxed after that, but it didn’t appear to be what Stefan wanted to hear. “If by helping her, you mean teaching her to be more like you, then that isn’t the kind of help she needs.”

Weighing in, Elena snapped, “And trying to ruin my relationship with my sister is?” Turning to me, she said, “This has something to do with the sire bond, doesn’t it?” I nodded, and she looked from Damon to Stefan and then back to me before she said, “You found something in one of the books you went to get yesterday, didn’t you? That’s how you know what this is really all about?” 

She might be a little slower at it than I was, but she came by her ability to piece things together honest. Must be a Gilbert/Flemming thing. My barely concealed look of pride was enough of an affirmative answer for her, and she turned her attention to Stefan. “I’ve learned a lot over the last couple of days . . . about Eve and myself.” Bowing her head, she added, “Last night, I said some horrible things to Eve . . . It was part of an act we agreed on ahead of time. I thought I was being so over the top on what I was saying that it’d sound outrageous to anyone who heard it, but Eve said the more ridiculous I was, the better it’d be, so that’s what I tried to do. I didn’t realize until today that she knew it would work because that’s how I’ve treated her since we met, and it has worked - to alienate her more than she would normally be just for being different. Because of how I’ve been, Bonnie didn’t know that it was act. She believed it and tried to use what I said against Eve today, and . . . “ 

With a sigh, she looked back up to Stefan and said, “It’s the same with you, or you wouldn’t have thought I’d be okay with her being collateral damage when you tried to turn her, and you wouldn’t have been so ready with ways you think she’s bad for me just now. Everything I’ve said about her has been because of my own issues, not because Eve is as bad as I’ve made her out to be, and now I can understand why Eve blamed me for what happened at the start of the school year. It was my fault, because if I am awful to her, then to the people I know, it must mean she’s awful, but she’s not. I just want to make that clear, because you can’t get by with saying those kinds of things about her to me and expect me not to get mad about it anymore, and if I’m honest, I resent the fact that you or Damon would do what you were trying to do when I know how supportive both of us have been to the two of you despite how toxic your relationship has been at times.”

After a shallow breath, she looked at me and added, “That said, if breaking the sire bond means that Damon has to leave, and you want to go with him, then you should. I want you both to be happy, and I don’t want to be sired to him. It’s just another thing coming between you and me. I hate that you don’t know if me wanting to move in here with you is because of you or him, and I hate that you don’t know if me wanting to spend time with you is because it’s what I want to do or what I think he’d want me to do, so I want it gone, but I want to fix what happened with Klaus first. I don’t want him killing any of us or chasing the two of you, so dealing with him needs to be the priority, and I want to know that you and I are really okay before you go so you’ll come back to visit, but that’ll take time. I want to make sure that your curse is gone too before you go, and I really want to try this whole vampire thing your way. Jeremy needs you too, so I guess what I’m trying to say is . . . I agree. It’s going to have to wait.”

“I take it this means I’m going to have to put up with seeing you every day until you’re convinced I’ll visit.”

The corners of her mouth curled up. “You’d better believe it.”

“Ugh . . . Maybe we should try a trial separation.”

“Seriously?!”

“I don’t know. Can we talk about it in the morning?” I’d had more than I could take for one day. “And you should probably stay here tonight if Imelda is at your place. I don’t know how she’ll react when she sees you. Just because she helped them try to put down two Originals at the same time doesn’t mean she’s ready to accept what you are yet. Probably better to be cautious for now.”


	43. Waffles

“So, you're going to go car shopping with Alice?”

To cheer her up after their failed attempt on Klaus, I’d offered, and it’d worked a treat. Alice had gone from lamenting about what would happen to all of us to instantly asking if she could borrow my laptop to start researching cars while Elena and I finished waffle-making 101. “I told her I would when I first taught her how to drive.”

“Really?”

“Yep.” 

Pointing at a nearing intersection, Elena quickly said, “Take a left here. It’ll be the second to last house on the right,” so I turned onto the street, and she asked, “How’s she going to pay for it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is she going to compel it out of somebody?”

I had no idea what kind of monetary assets Alice had. Klaus and Elijah seemed to be super rich on top of having their ability to compel people into giving them whatever they wanted, and Damon and Stefan were the same, so Alice might be too. On the other hand, her lifestyle hadn’t exactly screamed money when I met her, and I knew part of that was because the circumstances dictated that she live with her husband in that decrepit house, but their furnishings hadn’t been extravagant and neither had her clothes. Her husband had seemed arrogant, so maybe he thought that they were above money and had only ever gotten things they needed through magic or by relying on her compulsion to do it. I knew when I went clothes shopping with Alice, that I paid, and I didn’t know what Caroline did when Alice went shopping with her, but I assumed Alice must’ve gotten whatever she came home with herself. I just didn’t know or particularly care how she’d done it. 

As for shopping with her for cars, she’d specifically taken an interest in how I’d rebuilt this car, so I figured that meant that she might want to do something similar. I sort of think she had a car in mind, like she’d seen whatever model it was at some point and liked it for whatever reason, and now she just needed to find where one might be on sale. If that was the case, then I could front her the money if she needed it, because it wouldn’t cost much, and I wasn’t going to let an independent seller, who might really need the cash, go without just because Alice could compel them out of whatever they were selling. The real cost would be in the parts, and it’s not like she could compel someone on-line. Again, if she didn’t have the money for that set aside in an account somewhere, then I’d probably wind up getting those parts for her, or Damon and Stefan would. No need for compulsion. “Nope.”

“Well, when do you think you might take her?”

Pulling up to the curb, I muttered, “I don’t know. Why?” A quick glance offered the answer on that one. “You want to go too, don’t you?”

“Can I?”

“Sure why not. I’ll probably take her when I’m done with hunter boot camp.”

Happy enough with that answer, Elena waited for me to put the car in park before getting out to grab the wrapped plate of waffles in the back seat. The second the back door opened, she was ready with another question. “So what is it that Imelda has to do, exactly?” 

I was feeling a little overwhelmed. Give me vampires and killer curses any day. I found spending so much time with Elena to be emotionally draining. She was always asking questions, and I couldn’t fault her for that, because it meant she wanted to know what I thought or felt about things and generally, just more about me, but she was relentless. It encroached on some kind of mental or emotional personal space that I had to have. If I was being completely honest, then it was starting to feel a little like it had when I'd felt like I was under 24-hour surveillance on the road with Klaus and Stefan. 

I guess Rose was right. Damon was my person. I could spend day in and day out with him every day for 500 years without getting bored or needing space. With Caroline, we’d sometimes go days without seeing one another, or if we did see one another every day, it was for a few hours at school or to train or shop or just generally hang out, and then she’d go home or spend time with Tyler. I had space. She had space. It worked well. 

With Elena, I felt like I was being suffocated. I knew she was trying extra hard to make up for how we’d started and for every other screw up along the way, but it could also be that she and I just had vastly different ideas on what it meant to be family. If that was the case, then I wanted to give her some leeway, because she didn’t know any better, and I was probably the one with the wrong ideas on family anyway, but it was taxing. I really needed a break. 

Thankfully, something she wanted more than following me around was for me to help Jeremy. That gave me a free pass to go to the lake house tomorrow, and she was staying here, so she wouldn't interfere with how I trained him. I just had to make it through today without losing it. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about hurting her feelings. “Alice is the one who talked to her, but I think the plan is for her to go to the grave, see if she senses the magic, purify the area if it’s there, and hopefully, that will get rid of it. If she doesn’t find anything at the grave, then she’ll have to check Shane, and if it’s not there, then it probably means that Bonnie destroyed at least part of the curse last night.”

“The fifth level?”

I glanced at her, as I got out of the car and opened my umbrella. The umbrella seemed to be a requirement today. I’d barely made it to the car earlier without it, not that I’d let Elena see that. She probably would’ve nagged me back inside the house. “I’m not sure, but of the four places I visited in the talisman, only two seemed to be harming me. Of the three places in Hell proper that I visited, Limbo wouldn’t show up in any way, because it was mostly peaceful, and of the other two, the fifth circle doesn’t seem to be bothering me anymore, so the curse might be a third gone, half gone, or three-quarters gone, but something seems to have shifted.”

“And you don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing?” She waited until I came around the front of the car to meet up with her before admitting, “I heard you and Damon talking about it.”

At least the knives to the stomach had made me keep my anger in check. Without it, I apparently froze more things and had a harder time in the sun, so no, I suppose that extra check on my emotions disappearing wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “And now you know why I didn’t want you in the room next to mine.” 

After a quick grin, Elena looked down at the waffles and said, “I’m still not sure we should’ve brought these. They’re nowhere near being warm anymore.”

“Then it’s April’s own damn fault. Brunch is between like 10 and 12, and it’s now 1:30. I’m tired of waiting, and I have other things to do today. Besides, if you show up unannounced at someone’s house, then the least you can do is come back when you’re invited or text to say you won’t be able to make it. Not doing even that much just seems like the height of rudeness to me, or am I wrong?”

“Well, it’s not exactly polite, but I know you’re worried, the way I am, about what Klaus meant when he said he’d make Rebekah disappearing up to April. Did he mean he was going to stop by here, or was he just trying to pretend to be Rebekah long enough for you to do what he needed you to do with that dagger?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m worried, but if she’s fine, then I’m gonna be pissed.” Reaching forward, I rang the doorbell, and then pounded on the door three times for good measure.

“Just keep calm, okay? We don’t know anything yet, and the last thing we need is for you to – “

The door swung open, and there was April. Elena and I shared a look, and she subtly shook her head to reiterate what she’d been trying to say – don’t freeze the poor girl. Inhaling deeply through my nose, I exhaled slowly before looking back at April, and I didn’t really appreciate the glare I was getting now. “You guys can’t come in . . . I don’t invite you, so leave.”

She went to slam the door in our faces, and I reflexively swung my foot forward to stop the door from shutting. “Wrong. Looks like I can get in just fine.” 

April gasped, and I shoved the door open further. She backed away from us, and Elena grabbed me by the arm to keep me from going in after her, not that I was planning to do that. I just didn’t want to have the door shut in my face. “Eve, she’s scared. She obviously knows.”

“That’s right. I know everything, and I don’t have anything to say to you, so you two can go.“

Not that scared. She was mostly angry. “She is going to be a problem.”

“Eve.” At Elena’s warning, I looked at her, and she rambled, “She’s not going to say anything. She – “

“I’m sure that’s what you want, Elena, but this whole town deserves to know the truth.”

My eyebrows arched at April’s audacity as I turned from Elena back to her. “She’s rude, and she’s an idiot. Who the fuck tells the vampire and hunter on her doorstep that she’s going to rat them out?” 

“Someone who isn’t going to be pushed around by you. Now, goodbye.“

So much for the insecure girl I’d met yesterday. She’d had an underlying bravery, particularly when it came to pushing herself forward for something she wanted. Anger could have bolstered that some, but I suspected that she had another reason to feel so courageous now, and it had to do with how she’d found out about all of this. “Sure, and if you feel the need to spill your guts, let me direct you to the sheriff. I’m sure she’d love to take a statement.”

Her attitude became a little more uncertain, but then she rallied. “Maybe I will, and maybe I’ll go to the Mayor too.”

“Good luck with that. She’s dead.”

“What?” She looked between Elena and I before angrily asking, “Did you – “

“Look, I get that you’re mad at Elena for keeping secrets from you, because you’ve known her forever and look up to her or whatever, and she’ll probably put up with whatever you dish out, but it would be a mistake to assume I’m anything like her, so for your own sake, drop the attitude with me.”

Again, she went to shut the door in our face, and Elena quickly said, “April, wait! She didn’t mean it, and I’m sorry, okay. Everything is just complicated, and – “

“Save it for someone who believes your lies, Elena!” 

“Hey, you haven’t seen Rebekah, have you?” She stopped closing the door, and that was all the answer I needed. April thought she could talk shit because Rebekah was in there, wasn’t she? My eyes briefly flicked in the direction of the rest of the house before focusing on the brat in front of me. “Yeah, well, if you do, then tell her that I’m the one who let her go last night, and I have the dagger. I’ll make sure he doesn’t get it back.” 

The door started swinging shut again, and this time I let it as I added, “And tell her that if she wants to talk about what she’s missed, she should stop by my house tonight around 9, and I’ll talk to her. Formal Gothic dress for a formal Gothic dinner party, and I’m throwing it, so she’ll be safe. No back stabbing. She has my word. Catered food, wine, and as much blood as she wants as long as she’s okay with it being from a blood bag. There might even be parlor games if people are feeling up to it.” 

“Can I come?” 

What I’d found admirable yesterday, I mostly found annoying now. What was with people inviting themselves in on my plans today? This girl was clearly lonely, but instead of being my kind of lonely, it was more of a ‘I’m new back in a town where I was raised, but my friends have moved on without me, and I’m an orphan, which alienates me even more from the people who should be my friends, and the people I thought were my friends are all wrapped up in this vampire conspiracy, so I don’t have anything to do tonight,’ kind of lonely. I almost felt bad for her. Almost. “That depends. Are you volunteering to be on the menu?” She took a perplexed step back, and I said, “Then, no. It’s vampires only.”

“You’re not a vampire.”

“Nope. That was established when I crossed the threshold.”

“Then why – “

Leaning forward to put my free hand on my thigh, I lowered myself to her eye level and spoke to her slowly and with just a hint of sweetness to my tone, like she was a small child. “Because I kill vampires, so that puts me at least on par with them on the food chain, and I would’ve loved to fill you in on what I know over waffles, but you bailed on me.” Abruptly taking the plate from Elena without breaking eye contact, I shoved it in April’s direction saying, “So take them, you ungrateful, wretch.”

Rolling her eyes, Elena grabbed my shoulder to make me leave as she said, “Come on, Eve, let’s just go. You don’t have to be so mean.”

“Well, she didn’t have to be so rude.” As I looked back, April was still standing in the doorway looking a little confused and worried, so I added, “Just stick them in the microwave, throw some butter and syrup on them, and they’ll be fine, or strawberries and whipped cream if you have them are nice too.” Her confusion grew, and I grinned before turning away from her. 

“Was that necessary?”

“Well, I didn’t freeze her to death, so . . . “

“You know what I meant. She doesn’t have anyone else, and I was keeping things from her. She was compelled to forget things too. She has every right to be angry.”

“But not to treat me like dirt. I didn’t do anything wrong to her. In fact, I was the one who wanted to tell her about vampires, and you can bet that she got a skewed version of the truth if Rebekah is the one who told her what’s going on in this town.”

“I thought you liked Rebekah.”

“I like how hard she tries and keeps trying despite the number of times she’s been slapped down, but if I were her, I’d be pissed about what happened.”

“She can’t possibly know what they tried to do yesterday, can she?” 

Elena looked at me in worry, and I realized that maybe she didn’t know how Rebekah had been daggered. “Rebekah was as dead as any other cadaver would be until the second I removed the dagger, so she wouldn’t have been conscious of what was going on around her, and since Klaus was at the driving wheel after the dagger was removed, she wouldn’t remember anything that happened until I removed the dagger the second time.” 

That’s what Alice said about possession – there can only be one dominant soul in a body at a time, and that's the soul that would be conscious of its time in said body. It’s the explanation she’d given for why Shane might’ve lost his mind when Alec and I hadn’t. He was currently in the basement of the boarding house babbling Silas’s name over and over again. When I’d peeked in on his cell this morning, I’d been sure that it meant that Silas was every bit as bad as Alice and those books had said he was and that the futures Shane had seen meant that there was a good chance that Silas was coming back unless something drastic was done to stop him. Wanting to put my mind at ease, or maybe just her own because she’d been as weirded out by all of it as I was, Alice had explained what happens when a soul is transferred into a different body and then told me that if Connor wasn’t in his body while Shane had been temporarily stored there, then Shane probably remembered everything that’d happened in that grave, which would fracture anyone’s mind. If that was the case, then I felt a little bad about it. He was never supposed to be in a dead body for as long as he was. “But it doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t be told, because she’ll find out eventually, and it’s better if it comes from one of us, so we can control the narrative.”

While Elena processed that, I added, “And what I was actually talking about was the last thing she remembers before she was daggered. Stefan betrayed her . . . He got her to open up about her long, lost fiancé, who was one of The Original Five, so he could find out where she had the guy buried. Then he helped Klaus trap her, so Klaus could shove the dagger in her heart and keep her from getting in his way. On top of that, she knew that Stefan was doing it for you, so I’d say there’s a fair amount of anger directed at you for it as well.”

“How do you know that?” 

Well, Stefan certainly hadn’t said anything about it. “Alec.” It’d really bothered him. He’d had Jeremy bring it up at least twice the morning that I found out he was still around.

She shook her head, but it wasn’t in sympathy for Rebekah. “You should’ve left the dagger where it was instead of taking it when we left last night.”

“Why?”

“Because now, she’s going to be another problem that we don’t need.”

“It was the right thing to do, Elena. She didn’t deserve what happened to her.” She shot me a look, and I rolled my eyes. “Ask yourself how you’d feel about it if she was anyone else and you didn’t have a personal vendetta against her. She was emotionally manipulated by a man she used to love into giving up personal information that was deeply important to her about another man she used to love, and then the man who used her helped her brother imprison her in her own body. If even Alec said that it was harsh, then I’m sure it was. He’s not a fan of that family.”

“I’m not entirely sure you didn’t do it just for the dagger.”

Well, I wasn’t going to just leave a perfectly good white oak ash dagger lying around, was I? “I don’t know if I’m going to keep it. I will if she wants someone else to hold onto it, but I was sort of thinking of giving it to her as a peace offering, and then I was thinking I’d tell her what happened to Pastor Young, so she could be the one to tell April and earn some friend brownie points. Alec said she’d be a good ally, and she would, but I don’t mind her in general, so I’m kind of glad to have her back even if she becomes a pain in the ass. She livens things up around here, and I’m glad she’s making a friend with somebody who needs one. It kind of shows she’s not as bad as you think, because there’s nothing she can gain from April, like status or information, which means it’s a genuine attempt at friendship.”

Rather than argue with me, Elena tried, “I thought you were going to cancel the convention because of what happened with Carol.”

“Caroline and Tyler might not go, but if we keep it to the vampires at the house and Rebekah, it should be okay.”

“Is that smart? Won’t she go after Stefan?”

“She might, but she’s probably going to do that anyway, so it’s better to have it contained at the house where we have a literal home advantage than for her to do it somewhere else, and I don’t want anyone making a move on her. I meant what I said. As my guest, she’s to remain safe . . . unless she starts trying to rip people’s hearts out of course.”

“Which she’ll probably do, especially if you tell her what almost happened yesterday.”

“Not with Alice there. They’re pretty evenly matched.”

“And if Klaus shows up?”

“I don’t think he will.”

“What if we got Rebekah on our side?” 

“Things are pretty strained between she and Klaus right now, but it’s gonna take more than a night for her to want to do anything to help any of us. Let’s just survive her being there and see how it goes.”

“But we could try.”

Walking back around the front of my car as I closed my umbrella, I glanced in Elena’s direction and said, “She’ll target you. I mean, she already didn’t like you much, but she was daggered in your name, so now it’ll be worse. I’ll try to keep her from getting violent by talking to her when she gets there, but can you keep your cool if she starts in on you?”

With a shrug, she opened the passenger side door before saying, “If that’s what it takes.” I smirked to myself as I opened my own door. That was never going to happen. After we’d both gotten into the car, Elena asked, “Do you think Imelda will be there when we get back?”

If she was, then Alice was the only vampire there to greet her. Stefan and Damon had gone out for the day to give Imelda space to work with the professor in the basement. “Maybe.”

“And you’ll let her check you out?”

“I’m not sure I can fit it in today.”

“You said you’d think about it.” I rolled my eyes while I started the car. “Why don’t you want her to take a look at you?”

“I’m annoyed with her. She’s going to be annoyed with me, and right now everything is speculation, but if she says what I did last night made this worse, then it’s going to be definitive and suck. I prefer being in limbo at the moment.”

“If it’s bad news, then at least we’ll know and can try to do something about it.” 

That seemed to be the last straw. “Were you a horse in a past life? Because you sure are a nag now. It’s incredibly annoying!” After my outburst, I registered that I’d had one and quickly glanced in her direction. She was looking out the window with a frown and shaking her head. “Let me guess. If I did what you wanted the first time you asked, then you wouldn’t have to harp on it?”

“Since you brought it up, yes, it really annoys me when you don’t listen to me.”

“I’m not your little minion, Elena. I am a free-thinking independent person.”

“I’m glad you are, but you could do better about taking care of yourself, and this is important.” I huffed out a sigh, and she said, “And how are you going to be able to go to the cabin and help Jeremy tomorrow if you can’t go outside for very long?”

Good point, but I knew what she was doing, and it’s one of the main reasons why I found it difficult to let myself be closer to her. The more she found out about me, the more she’d recognize triggers she could use to get me to do what she wanted me to do. “Stop trying to tap into the sense of responsibility I have to my cousin to manipulate me.” I put the car into gear and added, “And during the day, Damon can take care of the outdoor stuff, like target practice. I’ll train him indoors on anything else until it gets dark.”

“You’re not fighting in the lake house, Eve.” My eyebrows rose in surprise at her tone, and she laughed. “I’m serious. I can’t believe I have to say this, but no rough housing inside. I don’t want anything to get broken, and I’ll be checking when I come down there next weekend.” We both relaxed a little, and a minute later she said, “Since you two are going to be there anyway, do you think it’d be worth trying to get rid of the sire bond while you’re away, like if Damon told me to stay here and be happy without him, we could see if there’s any change next weekend?”

“You want to try it in bits and pieces?”

“Maybe . . . or do you think it’s possible that Damon and I could live in the same town, and he could just say he wants me to stay away, so anytime I see him, I leave, and eventually, it’d break the sire bond, or . . . I don’t know. It just seems so unfair for everyone else’s lives to be turned upside down because of me. You have to leave the first home you’ve ever had and Damon has to leave his brother and his home, and Stefan has to lose Damon.”

“Technically, Stefan could leave with his brother.”

“But then he’d still have to be leaving his home, and he has friends here. You all do. If it’s possible, then I want to try it, and before you say it won’t work, I’m going to call it an experiment. You seem to like those.”

Another attempt at manipulation, but at least she was being honest about it. “I do like a good experiment, but I wasn’t going to say it won’t work. I don’t know if it will. The book said it had to be forever, and the witch in New Orleans seemed to indicate something similar, but it’s a rare phenomenon, and it’s probably been documented a lot less than it’s happened, so there might be more to it than any of us know right now. We could give it a try.”

“And if it doesn’t work, there’s always the cure.” All I did in response was give her a look. “What? All I’m saying is that we’ll try it your way, and if that doesn’t work, then there’s always another option.”

Try it my way? She’s the one who brought up experiments. Apparently she’d just wanted to dress up a plan she knew would fail in wrapping she thought I would support, so when it came to its inevitable conclusion, I wouldn’t be able to argue against her idea on the cure because ‘we’d tried it my way.’ Of all the fights I had ahead of me when it came to this cure and Silas, the one with her is the one I was looking forward to the least. “No . . . and how many ways do I need to tell you to stop trying to manipulate me before you actually cease and desist?”


	44. Always Evolving

The front door of the boarding house opened just as I was stepping up to it, and I was met by a rather fiery witch that I barely even recognized without her scars. “What the hell have you done?” 

I looked at Elena over my shoulder. This was one of the reasons I hadn’t been looking forward to seeing Imelda. I knew she was going to be pissed about the curse. What I wasn’t expecting was for my smugness at being right to be used against me. While I was looking away, Imelda lunged forward and flung her arms around me. To keep from touching her in the event that it might do her harm, I kept my hands in my pockets instead of fighting her off and looked down at the top of her head. “For crying out loud, Imelda. You use your powers too much if this is how you think fighting works without them.”

“Shut up, you infuriating girl. It’s a hug, and you know it.”

“You don’t hug.”

“It’s the first and last one I’m giving.”

I couldn’t keep the hint of humor out of my voice as I muttered, “Wow, I knew it was bad, but I really must be dying.”

Stepping back a bit without letting me go, she looked up at me and retorted. “Yeah, well, you were dead the last time I saw you.”

“And you were dying in a pool of blood the last time I saw you.” 

Waving that off, she turned away from me and headed into the house saying, “We’ve spoken since that.”

“But I couldn’t see you at the time. You’re looking well, Imelda.” She shot an uncertain look back at me, and I added, “Seriously . . . Despite whatever spell that must’ve backfired and taken your voice. I mean, that's surely what happened, since I haven’t heard a word from you since I came back from Hell.”

Continuing on into the living room, like she owned the place, Imelda tossed, “I got your messages,” over her shoulder. It wasn’t until she’d gotten a good 5 feet in front of me that she realized I’d stopped and was waiting with my arms crossed over my chest for a better answer than that. “I needed time to think.”

“Couldn’t have picked up the phone and said that? Hell, I would’ve taken a text.”

Walking past me on her way to one of the couches, Elena casually said, “Ignore her. She’s just upset that the girl we were supposed to meet for brunch didn’t let us know she was cancelling.” 

Her path would’ve taken her right past Imelda, except the small witch took a step to the side to give herself more room and kept her eyes trained on Elena the entire time. It was obvious that Elena was hurt by it, and Imelda’s snotty response didn’t help. “I will not ignore her, so zip it, or you’ll wish I was ignoring you.” Imelda glanced at me again before adding, “Eve knew I needed time, and I’m sure she understood that, but she came back from Hell and landed in what I’m certain has been a nightmare, so I can understand why she might also feel shunned by me in her hour of need. I don’t need you to dismiss how she feels to make me feel better about what she says to me. I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”

That was better than I would’ve hoped for under the circumstances. “Apology accepted.”

Imelda relaxed, but then her eyebrows rose rather haughtily before she said, “And where’s mine? 

“Sorry I made you waste all the witchy power you exerted yesterday?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, it was always a long shot, and Alice filled me in on what happened. I don’t think anybody comes out of it looking good. That’s not it.”

“I used the curse on somebody?”

The fire re-ignited behind her eyes as she stepped back up to me. “I don’t care about that man. He sounds like an idiot to me. I’m not happy that you turned to necromancy to teach him a lesson, but that’s not what has me so upset. You were treading water and finding a way to live with this until I could figure out how to get rid of magic that was never intended to be encased in a human, but then you had to go and exacerbate the entire situation. And I quote, ‘I might’ve just done the smartest or the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.’ You were playing around with things you don’t understand, and you knew you didn’t, but you did it anyway. You jumped without a safety net, Eve, and you have got to be better than that. This world needs you.”

If you were a witch and knew me, it was obvious that I didn’t have a very good grasp on magic, because I was always trying to come at it from too logical of a standpoint, so my lack of understanding wasn’t her problem. “You mean it’s a magic you don’t understand, don’t you?”

Turning away from me, she briefly threw her hands into the air. “I did . . . when it was where it was supposed to be. If you’d just let me destroy it when it was in the talisman – “

“Nobody would’ve gotten out of there if I’d let you do that.”

Waving that off as she started pacing, she shook her head and said, “Then you should’ve left them there.”

“No, I shouldn’t have, and you know it.”

Stalking back up to me, she argued, “What I know is that you somehow managed to turn this into something that has a mind of its own, and if it gets out there, then who knows what damage it will do?!”

I didn’t think that meant that she was even contemplating killing me to keep that from happening with the rest of the curse I housed. She was in a completely different head space right now. “You found it . . . but it wasn’t in the professor. It was in the grave, wasn’t it?” It was obvious now that she was that terrified of it, but she wouldn’t be this scared if she hadn’t sensed it when it wasn’t being housed by anyone or anything. “You didn’t get infected by it, did you?”

As her anger cooled, she briefly shook her head. “It was under several feet of dirt.”

The implication being that she might have if it hadn’t been. “But you still got a sense of its true face, the one unshackled by any kind of protective barrier? You must have. We burnt the body to ash, so if the magic is still there, then being in the ash is as close to freedom as it’s ever been.” 

“I purified the ground as much as I could and put up some protection spells that will hold until I find something in nature to bind them to that’s more permanent.”

She kept glancing at the door, like she was expecting some inky cloud to come floating in at any moment, and for making her feel that kind of fear, I was sorry. “When I was in Hell, the magic was interactive, like a computer program that was developing artificial intelligence to counter the moves I made. I think it could do that, because it was given the ability to make its own decision on how many souls a person was worth if that person didn’t roll the die before dying, and it does seem to have a mind of its own now that it’s no longer trapped in the talisman, but it’s not difficult to understand. It just wants to survive.“

“I know what you’re trying to do, and apology accepted, but it doesn’t lessen how scary what I found is. I’ve never felt anything so evil in my life, Eve. I have no idea how you are containing it right now. It’s definitely there under the surface. It’s just muted.” 

Opening the my jacket, so I could show her the diamond pin that Elijah had given me, I suggested, “Maybe by this?” 

Her eyes flicked from the pin to me, and her shoulders fell. “If I can still sense it through that and you lost some of it last night, then . . . “ She gave me a once over before taking half a step back. “How are you still alive?”

“Well, I am strong-willed.”

“Do I look like I’m in any kind of mood to be putting up with you being a smart ass?”

“Is it really a marvel that I’m still alive, or are you exaggerating? You have a tendency to do that.”

She opened her mouth to respond before quickly leaning back with a pout. “That might be true, but . . . there are laws of nature and magic and who knows what else at play here that I don’t understand. I just don’t see how it’s possible for you to be standing here talking to me right now. You should be completely overwhelmed. The balancing act you must have to do is . . . well, I don’t think it’s possible that any normal human could.” 

Well, would you look at that. Finally, a brainstorming session on this topic that actually produced results. Maybe it was because it was with an actual expert this time. The key word was ‘normal.’ I was a normal human, but I also wasn’t. “Imelda, what am I?”

“The most tragic figure I’ve met in person.”

“You’ve hardly ever met anyone in person.”

“The sentiment still remains.”

“Well, then you haven’t taken in the stories of a lot of the vampires you’ve met, because they all have tragic tales attached to them.”

“They don’t count.”

“Of course they do.”

“I think we’re getting away from the point.”

I rolled my eyes before saying, “What happened to me before I was born? I know you know.”

“Your sister was taking – “ Her eyes widened as it finally hit her. “They removed the doppelganger magic from you . . . That makes you an empty vessel, one with the potential to hold more magic than a normal human, but even with that extra space, I can’t imagine that you have much room to breathe.”

“Which is why my cup runneth over last night after the curse was activated.”

“But even on a day to day basis, it must be extremely difficult for you. If we’re sticking with the cup analogy, then you must be topped up to the brim. It must constantly be threatening to overflow – what you're harboring is still immensely powerful.”

“It is. In some respects, I'd say it's as strong as it ever was, but that's not to say that it's not also severely weakened. To add another analogy into the mix, let’s say that it’s a little like Jenga pieces are filling that cup. Some of those pieces have been removed, but the overall space taken up by the Jenga structure as a whole is the same, so it’s still near the top of the cup. It's just that there are gaps now that - "

"Would make it easier to collapse?"

"Yes, but without the pieces that were removed, I am also missing the early warning system I had to at least try and keep my emotions in check, so – “

“It’s more likely to overflow than it is to collapse.”

“Yeah.” I have her an uncertain nod. 

“How sure are you?”

“Pretty sure. I mean it helps that I already came to some kind of understanding with it before last night, so I’m not at a complete loss on what’s going on with the part that’s left. I think it’s the same, but it’s unstable now.” 

Imelda looked perplexed, worried, almost like she was afraid to ask. “When you say you came to an understanding with it, what do you mean exactly?”

It’s not like I’d made a deal with it or anything. Well, at least not one outside of the initial one that blew up the demon die and left me holding what remained of the dark magic. “I do a lot of experiments to see how it responds. Some make it worse. Some make it better, and I take my experiences in Hell and apply them out here in the real world, like it was obvious to me when I was there that the entire set up was designed for the talisman to gain power from squeezing as much fear, sorrow, pain or anger from a soul as possible, so that fear that you can’t shake? The magic was created to make you feel that way, because fear is probably what fuels it the most, but I don’t really get scared. I do get angry, and I get sad, so it’s been living off of the energy it gets from that, like a parasite. Being around Damon helps weaken the effects of it, and reduced stress helps too. As for last night, after the curse was activated, it’s almost like it still thought I was its owner, because I was able to re-write the rules the way that I could in Hell.”

Suddenly looking around us, she went to the nearest desk saying, “Okay . . . Okay, that helps. If you think you could help me break it down, explain it in detail, I might be able to find a way to unravel it.” Finding a piece of paper and a pen, she muttered, “Fear is the foundation . . . self-determination has led to self-awareness,” as she wrote and then moved to the couch across from the one where Elena had gone to wait. Pulling a coffee table in front of her, Imelda scribbled down some more things, and I glanced at Elena. She seemed worried and sad. I gave her a faint smile before tilting my head in the direction of the doorway. She started to shake her head, and without looking up, Imelda said, “There are probably things she doesn’t want to say with you here. You should go.” 

The same sad look returned to Elena’s face, and I felt bad for her, but Imelda was right. I didn’t want to go into what happened with Bonnie last night in detail while Elena was here, because I didn’t want Elena to hear what that experience had been like for me. I tried to give her a more reassuring look before I again tilted my head in the direction of the doorway, and this time, she reluctantly got up to go. When she was gone, the first thing Imelda said was, “How’s that going?”

“Hit and miss, so I guess you could say it's the same as always. She did break up with Stefan though.”

“Should’ve done it before she became a vampire, not that I blame her for becoming one, and I hate that I can’t really even blame them. It was that doctor at the hospital that did it.”

“Yeah, I had a word with her.”

“Should’ve had more than a word.” I briefly smiled before saying, “And Elena’s only ever had animal blood. I’m trying to get her to switch to blood bags.”

Imelda finally stopped writing to look at me. “Why would you want her to get a taste for human blood?!”

“Uh, because I feel sorry for the animals out in the woods, she needs to learn how to control her cravings by not turning human blood into a taboo that makes it harder for her to turn away from the cravings she has around it, and I don’t want her to get used to how it feels to sink her fangs into a living creature.”

She paused a beat before going back to her sheet of paper without saying a word, but if I had to interpret her lack of response, I’d say she didn’t want to say that the best option would be for me to kill Elena, and if she wasn’t going to say that, then she couldn’t really argue with what I’d said. Despite how she was treating Elena to her face, Imelda was definitely making progress as a person. It might just take a while for Elena to prove herself enough that Imelda would be willing to give her a chance. The fact that Alice had managed to live with her said that a better scenario with Elena wouldn’t be impossible. “Okay, so tell me what you didn’t want to say in front of her.”

“I, um . . . last night when Bonnie did the spell – “

“I wouldn’t call what Bonnie did a spell. I leave you kids for a few weeks, and you all go off the rails. She is my next port of call after I leave here.”

“Be careful.” My immediacy in saying that made her chance another look in my direction. “The second sacrifice in the Expression Triangle was completed last night, so her power is going to be off the charts, and she is not ready to give it up yet.”

“Expression Triangle?”

“Yeah, I’ll let you see the book I found it in the other day. It’s what the professor was trying to complete. 12 human souls – “

“I’ve heard of that being done, but most witches aren’t allowed to get that far into Expression before other witches step in to cleanse them.”

“Yeah, well, the 12 Council members dying was orchestrated by the guy downstairs, and that happened the day that Elena turned and I came back, so that power was available for Bonnie to use before he even helped her unlock the door to it. She’s been channeling it all along without knowing it.”

“If she’s channeling that, then – “

“Not just that. Last night, there were 12 vampires killed at the grave site you went to on the Lockwood estate, so she’s going to be channeling the power from their deaths too, and after that, 12 witches will need to be killed for the triangle to be complete.”

“Oh my god.” She glanced towards the direction of the cellar and murmured, “He’s a monster.” 

“Yep.”

“I take it you tried to stop the second sacrifice?”

“Well, I killed 11 vampires and was planning to take the 12th somewhere else to kill it, but then Klaus ripped the 12th vampire’s head off in a temper. I should’ve left it at 10 and saved 2 to kill somewhere else.” 

She tried to put my mind at ease. “You had no way of knowing.”

“But I should have.”

“You can’t know everything, and there are 12 fewer vampires to terrorize this planet because of what you did. That means you actually had the win of the day even if it didn’t work out the way you wanted. We can figure out what to do about Bonnie, but there’s nothing we could’ve done to replace the innocent lives those monsters would have taken if they hadn't died last night. You did the best you could with the information you had at the time, and I’m sure you were a little preoccupied with whatever you underwent with Bonnie.”

“It was pretty bad.”

“So tell me about it, and stop being so hard on yourself, or I’m going to need to borrow a sweater.”

Suppose that meant I was making it a little frosty in here. I shot her a brief smile before looking at her paper and saying, “It felt like . . . at first I felt heavy, then I went numb, and it started to get tingly, and after that, it felt like I was being skinned alive from the inside by millions of tiny razor blades . . . I could feel the curse digging in deeper and Bonnie trying to rip through it, and it was like being pulled inside out in a tug of war, so I tried to hold onto everything that was me to keep from being pulled apart right along with it. I think that maybe the part of the magic that was responsible for creating the 5th circle of Hell, the one that deals with wrath – that’s what you found at the grave site, but what I have left is definitely the 9th. That’s where it was cold. It’s where the people who betray a person close to them go. I may not have been the one betraying anyone, but I think I felt in sync enough with a force that was designed to punish those who betray that I mistook it for being a part of me and held onto it while being able to let go of wrath in general . . . if that makes sense?”

Giving me a sad smile, she nodded. “It does.” Looking back to her paper, she asked, “Does it hurt at all?”

“The 5th circle did. Every time I got angry, it punished me for it. It felt like I was being stabbed in the stomach with knives, and even if I got annoyed, it made me feel sick. If I was really worn down and got angry, then I did get sick, and it was this black sludge that smelled a lot like the 5th circle, but that only happened twice. One of those times was just after I came back, because Elena and I had been kidnapped by those wannabe hunters that came to the house. If I cried, then they were black tears, and when my anger was at its worst, the symptoms I had from the 5th level fed into the problems that I have with the 9th level. With the 9th, it doesn’t hurt unless I’m in direct sunlight for too long or get too hot. Then I get physically drained and have burns. If water isn’t cold, then I get blisters, and I freeze water anytime I touch it. Meredith is a little worried about me being dehydrated because of it.” 

“Any other parts of Hell that you think might be in there?”

“I’ve really only felt symptoms from the 5th and 9th, but I visited Limbo and arrived outside the gates in the place where the Uncommitted go, so they might be in there still, or they could be at the grave site.” 

She wrote a few more things down and then said, “I’ll try taking a look to see what you’re housing when we’re done here . . . Are you okay with telling me what happened while you were there?” 

Now that I knew Alec was out, I had no problem relaying what it’d been like. “Sure.”

“I need as many details as you can remember or observations that you had along the way. I’m not sure how long it’ll take me to figure this out or how unstable what happened last night will make this now, but I will get there, Eve. I promise. I just wasn’t expecting it to have evolved like this.”

“I know . . . course you could’ve called, and I would’ve told you.”

“Don’t start.”

“Or you could have not run away when Damon found you and told you about it.”

“What’d I just say?” I exhaled a laugh before filling her in on as much as I could.


	45. Inconvenient Truths

There was a knock at my bedroom door, and I looked at the pile of fabric in front of me on the bed. I’d spent so much time setting up the living room after Imelda left that I really didn’t have time for interruptions now. “Eve? Can I come in?”

I'd really rather she didn't. “Can’t really keep you out by saying no, can I?” 

Bonnie door opened a crack and hazarded a peek inside. “Wow, this is, um . . . nice.”

“It’s a mess. What’d you need?” At my abruptness, she looked over her shoulder. Her expression clearly said, ‘I change my mind,’ to someone down the hall, and that’s when I understood what was happening. Elena was pushing her into talking to me. “I just saw her an hour ago, but tell Elena, I said, 'hi.'”

Standing erect, like I’d caught her in the act, Bonnie smiled before saying, “I, um . . . So, is it okay if I come in? It’s a little weird trying to talk to you from out here.”

She’d turned herself into a villain last night, my villain, and she hadn’t done it to save me or even the man locked in a cell downstairs. She’d done it for the girl down the hall. I didn’t want to hear anything she had to say to me. She was going on the same list as Stefan, the one for people I couldn’t kill, because they were important to people I cared about, but who I would like to at least pretend didn’t exist. The problem was that as long as I continued living in this town, she’d eventually break through that invisibility barrier the way Stefan had last night. I might as well get it over and done with now, so I could get on with my life, because nobody was going to leave me alone about it until I did, and there were better battles for me to be facing. “Come in before I change my mind.” 

I watched her cautiously walk in and then debate with herself on whether or not she should close the door before finally shutting it. Again, she awkwardly looked around at everything but me, and when she finally did, I tilted my head in the direction of the foot of my bed. I mean, she could grab the chair at my desk, but it felt like that would make this take longer, and I didn’t think she intended to be here for long. Taking a cautious seat, she kept her hands in her lap, and finally said, “So, you’re probably wondering why I’m here.” My eyebrows arched, like ‘yeah, so get on with it,’ and she exhaled an awkward laugh. “Okay, I just want to get this out of the way first, so you don’t think it's why I’m here.” Looking down at the phone in her hand, she added, “It’s really more of an excuse than anything.” 

“An icebreaker?”

She smiled before nodding as she looked back up at me. “Yeah . . . It’s Shane’s phone. Elena said that you would know if me showing it to him will be enough for him to remember the password. I just . . . I really want to see what’s in it – who his contacts are.”

“Find out if he was really in communication with Hayley yesterday?”

Exhaling an uncomfortable laugh, she focused on the phone and said, “And pictures.” When she looked back up at me, she explained, “I need to know for myself why he would do something as bad as you’re saying he did.”

Bonnie could just call Caroline’s Mom for the medical examiner’s reports or look up his marriage certificate the way I had. Other than verifying that he had been in contact with Hayley, I got the impression that this might just be what she said it was, an excuse to talk to me. My eyes flicked to the phone, and I answered, “It’s an inanimate object, so he won’t remember anything on sight. If there’s anything on there that’s important to him, then he might feel like he has to remember something about it and concentrate on it. Expect a bloody nose. If he's willing to suffer for it enough, it’ll eventually come to him along with all the memories he has associated with it . . . assuming he responds the way Alec did to it.”

“Yeah, I talked to Imelda . . . She doesn’t think what we did last night is what’s causing whatever is wrong with him now.”

Well, Alice hadn’t been wrong about him being able to remember his time in a corpse, but Imelda thought that the reason his brain was scrambled had more to do with Silas, like Silas had infected the professor’s mind when the professor found him, and now that re-wiring on top of what I’d done had caused a short-circuit in his brain. “I heard. Makes it seem like Silas is a little more than myth, doesn’t it?” 

Ducking her head, Bonnie said, “It also makes it seem like what Shane did wasn’t entirely his fault, but his brain was fried anyway.”

“Except we’re not talking about compulsion here. It’s more like . . . supernatural brainwashing, which is a little different. There was serious manipulation involved, but there’s a reason people in cults still get charged with crimes even though they’ve been brainwashed.”

She considered it before saying, “Charged? Yes. Killed? No.”

“I think that depends on the state and crime, but I’m fairly sure that all but one of the Manson Family are still in prison for murders they committed in the 70s, and Shane’s not dead. He’s sitting downstairs as we speak.”

“He might as well be dead. He didn’t even recognize me when – “ Looking away, she shook her head and exhaled a calming breath.

“Or maybe he did, and all he remembers is that he was teaching you Expression, so he’s waiting for more information to find out why or even how he knows what Expression is.” When she looked at me, I shrugged a shoulder. “I’m not saying his brain isn’t also fried. He might not be able to say anything more than ‘Silas’ right now, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot going on under the surface too. Alec used to play his own games to figure out what was going on around him. He either pretended like he knew more than he did or made it seem like he was worse than he was, and the Professor isn’t an idiot either. He was smart enough to find Silas when nobody else in 2000 years has been able to do that, and he did it without the sword Klaus has. If Silas did infect his mind enough that it’s causing what is going on with him right now, then it was only by making a psychic connection of some kind that convinced the professor that he’d resurrect the professor’s dead family and how to get him out, so he could do it, but the professor took it from there, just like Hayley did when she set up the sacrifice last night of her own free will even though she knew it was wrong.”

“So, he’s a bad guy, and he isn’t.”

“He’s allowed his grief to be exploited for bad. Yeah.”

“Do you think I have?”

“I think . . . “ How should I put this? “I think he’s as skilled at manipulation as Silas, has made you believe he sees you in a way others can’t, and it makes me feel really good about breaking his neck.”

“Did you mean what you said the other night? You don’t think I know my own value if I don’t have magic.”

“It was supposed to be an intervention. Lying would’ve accomplished the opposite of what I wanted, so yeah, I called it like I see it, but I’m not sure I worded it that way. Value. Worth. I don't usually describe people using cost/benefit terminology . . . unless of course I've taken them and are holding them for ransom.” 

She offered a sad smile at me being pedantic, and I sighed. “Every time you stand up against someone who is doing something wrong or who tries to get you to do something you think is wrong, you’re exhibiting that you place a high importance on your morals and beliefs, but . . . I think what I was trying to say the other night is that the people around here have demonstrated over and over again that your magic makes you important, so you believe you need it to be important.” 

She dropped her head to look at her hands, and I added, “Every time they’ve turned to you to fix their problems when you have magic but have then left you out in the cold when you haven’t had it for whatever reason, it reinforces the idea that you’re only relevant because of what you can do for others instead of being who you are, and that’s wrong, or I think it is.” 

Her gaze flicked back up to me as she said, “So, what you said to Elena about her never losing anything for me . . . you meant that too.”

Not wanting to dwell on this anymore, I hesitantly answered, “Uh, yeah . . . I also mean it when I say that I think the professor was trying to find a way in with you by using your need to perform magic, the same way he used Pastor Young’s grief to hypnotize him into - “

“How can you be so sure he hypnotized him?”

“I guess Pastor Young just seemed so sure of himself and what he was doing about the vampires in town that I find it a little hard to believe he would sacrifice himself and 11 other people a few hours later if he wasn’t hypnotized into it – which is more like compulsion by the way - but I suppose it’s possible that after he failed in his first attempt on the vampires, he needed a win, so after several phone calls with the professor, the Pastor, a man of God, decided to give sacrificing 12 people to free an old witch a try and wrote his daughter a goodbye letter saying that a greater evil was coming because he was happy to be a part of bringing that greater evil into the world, not trying to warn her about it or the war to follow.”

Her mouth twitched to the side, and after a brief moment of thought, she mused, “That does seem a little far-fetched.”

“Mm.”

After a deep breath, Bonnie started to say, “So, about last night – “

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Right . . . Okay, yeah, I get that.“ She waited all of 10 seconds before saying, “All I was trying to do was help.”

I knew on some level that was true, but it wasn’t help I’d wanted. “So, I guess that means we’re talking about it then.”

“No . . . No, we don’t have discuss it if you don’t want . . . It’s just that you were being unreasonable, and something needed to be done.”

“It did, did it?”

Completely flat and rhetorical. She answered it anyway. “Yeah, I mean you were acting like a crazy person talking about how it meant you had more skin in the game when really you were just dying, and . . . I mean that is what you did with Imelda, right? You made the choice to save her with vampire blood even if it wasn’t what she wanted.”

Valid point. “Except she was mostly unresponsive when I found her. In fact, the first word she was able to get out was ‘hurts,’ so I alleviated that pain. I didn’t cause more.”

“But you still did something you knew she wouldn’t want.”

“Without a living will, I did what I thought was best. We’ve since spoken about it, and I know what she wants me to do if I ever find her like that again, so I will see to it that it’s done. The difference is that I told you outright that I did not want your help. A better analogy to use from my perspective is that you decided that I wasn’t in my right mind, so you thought that gave you the right to perform a lobotomy on me when you have no training in it and on the say so of my next of kin, who also had no idea what the hell she was doing.”

Biting the inside of her cheek, she nodded before looking away from me as she changed the subject. “So, Imelda’s leaving again?”

She’d called a witch, who called a witch, who called another witch who said she might be able to help with a component of the necromancer’s spell. “Yeah, but she’ll be back.”

“When she gets all the pieces she needs together, she’s going to try the counter spell on the part in the ground first, right?” She said it, like she knew the answer, but I nodded anyway. “She wasn’t very happy with me.”

“Same here.” 

Bonnie’s mouth curled up into a faint smile. “But she’s not as bad as I used to think either. She said if I don’t have the Expression situation dealt with by the time she’s done with your curse, she’ll take care of it, but she doesn’t want me using it again, because it will get stronger the more I use it, and instead of being alive for her to train, I’ll just be dead.”

I saw the same glint in her eyes that I must’ve had when Klaus said he wanted to train me, training I needed to start getting ready for soon if I wanted to be done with plenty of time to get dressed for the convention. “She’s going to train you?”

Her smile grew. “She said witchcraft is normally passed down from generation to generation, and since my Mom left, Grams would’ve done it, but with Grams gone, I need someone to train me, or I’m just going to keep making a mess of things, so . . . I’m actually kind of excited about it. I mean, I know she’ll have to have a word with the spirits to get the okay on me practicing again, but she thinks that if she sponsors me, the spirits might go for it.”

“I’m almost as excited as you are. You really need the training.” She exhaled a laugh, and I said, “So, I take it the next step is shutting the door on Expression.”

“Yeah, I guess it depends on how long it takes her to come back. She left me a few numbers for witches I could try, so I might try them if she takes too long.”

“Why not call them now?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t plan on using Expression, but with how things are around here at the moment, I’d just feel better having something, you know?”

Yes and no. I did always have weapons on me in case I needed them for some reason, but aside from my mind, the only weapon I had that came from some internal place, like magic did for her, was this damn curse. I’d gone with the nuclear option yesterday by using it, but that’s what Expression was for her every second of every day. I was also doing everything I could to understand my curse so I could find a way to live with it until it was gone. If I could get rid of it right now, I would, but Bonnie was holding on to Expression until she could go back to using more conventional magic. That didn’t resonate with me at all. 

I think we were on opposite sides of the same coin. Her being a witch was as much a part of her identity as me being a hunter was to me, but I wanted to go back to being normal, and she was willing to do anything to keep from being normal. You didn’t need magic to still be a witch though, just like I didn’t have to be curse-free to be a hunter. I wondered if she had anything else to look forward to in the future. If she was reminded of that, then maybe it’d be easier for her to give up Expression for the time being. “Hey, what do you want to do . . . other than be a witch?”

She hesitated before finally shaking her head. “I don’t know. What do you want to do other than be a hunter?”

“Well, if I’m going to college, it’ll be to become a better hunter.”

Her eyes briefly narrowed, and she gave me a confused smile before saying, “But I mean, you have to make a living right? You’re not going to live off of Damon for the rest of your life. I thought you were more independent than that.”

“I am, but my Mom saw to it that I’d be taken care of if anything ever happened to her, and I strongly suspect that Klaus will top me up if it’s ever needed too. I sort of think he might’ve done that already, because I don’t think interest accumulates that fast, and he seemed to know my Mom had left me quite a bit, but there was already more there than I’d ever be able to spend in a lifetime, so who knows?” 

“Wait, you’re joking, right?”

“No. I don’t actually ever have to work a normal job if I don’t want to do it.”

”How much money are we talking here?” Sitting back, she shook her head. “No, don’t tell me. I don’t think I want to know.” Leaning back towards me she whispered, “But you don’t spend any of it. Caroline said you complain any time you have to spend anything.”

“I grew up with very little, and even after Mom turned, I didn’t want any ill-gotten gains I could’ve had because of her being a vampire. It’s one of the reasons my car means so much to me. She wanted to get me something expensive, and she hated that I picked a car in someone’s front yard, but she agreed to get it for me anyway. My Dad challenged her to do it without compelling the guy, so she did and just negotiated him down on the price the old fashioned way. Dad and I built it together after that, so that car is full of memories I wouldn’t have if I’d just had her compel me one of the cars she wanted to get, and if I didn’t want the finer things in life that she could’ve provided then, I certainly don’t want them now when the only reason I have money to spend is because she died. I’m also not going to waste it or give it all away because it’d feel like I was disrespecting her final wishes to do that, and obviously, if it means I can just focus on hunting instead of having to worry about how I’m going to pay for it, then I’m not going to turn it down either . . . just use it sparingly.”

Nodding, like she sort of understood, Bonnie said, “You’ve yet to find something you do that isn’t self-serving in some way.”

“Pretty much. It does come in handy when I have to pay to replace a whole set of giant windows after they get blown into thousands of tiny pieces though.” She smiled, and I added, “I used to think about it before . . . what I’d do if I could do anything, like vampire hunter detective or vampire hunter psychologist, but now I mostly just want to focus on being a hunter, so I’ll be an Occult Studies major, and if I like it, then I might go further with it, but I’ll still be primarily a hunter.”

“I suppose doing Occult Studies worked out well for Grams. At least she could be a witch and make a living out of it with what she knew.”

“You know your Mom could just do what mine did, right?” Looking to the side, while she pondered that, she eventually said, “I think I get why you’d feel it wasn’t earned and not want to take advantage of it, especially if she got it by stealing it through compulsion . . . but I don’t think I’d turn down a Porche either.” 

That one finally made me smile. “So, you definitely want a career?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Well, would it be something you need magic to do? I mean, there are witches all over this country who make a living out of being a witch.”

“But they make money out of providing services, like Imelda, or selling party tricks. I want something more legitimate than that.”

That was promising. “Horticulture? Witches have a natural green thumb when it comes to plants.” They didn’t need magic to be connected to plants either. From what I'd heard, her Mom hadn't. She made a face, like she wasn’t that into it, and I glanced at the dress on my bed. “Fashion?”

“Actually, that might not be so bad. Maybe accessories, like artisan jewelry?”

“Or Gloria had a bar in Chicago since at least the 1920s. There’s always something like that too.”

“That could be fun. I could buy the Mystic Grill and run it the way I want.”

“Or be its competitor. This town could do with more places to go, like an old time speakeasy?”

“I like that . . . or maybe a cool coffee shop with a similar kind of theme?”

“Where you could sell your artisan jewelry.” 

She grinned. “Plenty of travelling for inspiration.”

“And then you’d just bring it all back here to Mystic Falls?”

“It’s my home.”

“I guess people are my home more than places.”

“It’s not that different for me. It’s just that most of the people I feel that way about are here.” 

“Fair enough.”

Sensing a lull in the conversation, Bonnie looked towards the door and said, “Speaking of home, I should probably try the phone with Shane and then go.”

Looking at the purple dress in front of me, I nodded, “And I have to make alterations to this monstrosity before my instructor arrives.”

Touching the fabric, Bonnie smiled before saying, “It’s beautiful the way it is. Why would you change it?”

“It’s what I wore to Esther’s ball. I didn’t have time to get a dress for the vampire convention, because Caroline and I spent all our time on dresses for Miss Mystic Falls, so I’m working with what I have.”

“What’s the deal with this vampire convention anyway? Caroline said you were excited about it.”

Should I have invited her? After last night, I was glad I hadn’t. It was going to take time for me to get over that. In fact, it’s probably a good part of the reason that I found Elena to be even more trying today than I normally did, but before the last couple of days had happened, I suppose I could have invited Bonnie if I’d thought of it, but I hadn’t, just like I hadn’t considered inviting Matt or April or Jeremy. I may have gotten a little carried away with my theme of it being a vampire convention with a huntress who popped up to take some heads just before dessert, or in this instance, darted Stefan with vervain when he least expected it. I’d just been so focused on getting the story right that I’d gotten a little exclusionary without realizing it. “Honestly, it’s just an inside joke between Damon and I. I’m really throwing it for him and taking our joke to the next level, but for there to be a convention, there should probably be more than one vampire for the huntress to plague. Can’t exactly go around shooting my boyfriend. He gets very annoyed with me when I do, particularly in the house.”

As understanding struck her, she responded, “That’s why you invited Klaus and now Rebekah. You want there to be drama for your little joke.”

“Okay, it is the main reason I invited Klaus, but that’s not why I invited Rebekah . . . Although now that you mention it, the biggest table at the convention is reserved for vampires who want to get rid of Klaus, because only vampires with a cause are admitted, so now Rebekah should slot in nicely at that table providing she isn’t so rotten that she actually turns it into the anti-Rebekah table.”

“Yeah, you definitely have a different idea of fun than I do.” After another chuckle, she got to her feet. “Okay, I’m gonna go. Personally, I’ve had enough drama to last me awhile.” Pausing, she said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Go for it.”

“You went at Shane hard from the start. Why?”

A lot felt like it’d happened since then. “I didn’t like his lecture. It was obvious that he knew witches were real and liked having that over his students that weren’t in the know, and overall, I felt like it was a show he was putting on for you. I didn’t like that.”

“So, it had nothing to do with him humiliating you in his class.”

Is that seriously how she’d convinced herself that she shouldn’t have listened to all my warnings, or was it what he’d come up with to get her to listen to him instead of me? “Elena is the one who drew the class’s attention onto me, and then she made it worse by pulling me back into my seat. I just already didn’t like him and didn’t particularly want him using me to further his agenda in the class.”

Thinking back on it, Bonnie repeated my words back to me. “’Like the good showman you think you are,’ – that’s the last thing you said before you walked out of the room.” Something about remembering that seemed to alter her previous perception of my words and actions since then, and her forehead crinkled in confusion. “Why? Why would you go after him the way you did for me? We’re not even friends.”

“Because after ignoring the red flags with Jeremy when he was being possessed by Alec’s Dad, I decided that was the first and last time I was ever going to do that, and the professor was raising all kinds of alarms for me. He was particularly focused on you.”

She gave me a nod to let me know she’d take that under advisement, and then hesitated again. “You’re not completely right, you know . . . I hate how it feels to sit around and watch bad things happen to my friends when I know that if I had magic, I could do something to stop those bad things from happening, so I do feel powerless without it, but I mostly want to do whatever I can to help, because I want to protect the people I care about, not because they make me feel like I’m useless without it. I’m the one who feels that way all on my own . . . just thought you should know that. I don’t want you holding my own issues against anyone else.”

It was a subtle difference, but it was a difference. She didn’t want me to think that the others were using her and that it was causing her dependency on magic. “You mean, Elena.”

“She’d never use me the way you’re suggesting.”

Maybe not explicitly, but implicitly, Elena expected Bonnie to do things for her with magic all the time. “I understand what you’re saying, but . . . look, to be honest, I never had a problem with what happened to your Mom. The choice was between you, her, or Elena, and your Mom was an adult who’d had a chance to live her human life, so she was the logical choice.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’ll get to it. Do you know why her taking off was probably the best thing she could’ve done for you and her step-son until she figured things out?”

“It wasn’t good that she left. I needed her to stay.”

“No, you need her to come back, but right after she turned, she needed to go. No kid should have to be responsible for raising a baby vampire-slash-mother.” She lost some of her anger over me bringing up a sore subject when she remembered that I knew first-hand what that was like. “It would’ve taken over your life, and you would’ve started missing more school than you already do. You wouldn’t have gotten to spend time with friends or have a life, and you definitely wouldn’t have been able to be there for her and still save your friends the way you want. It would’ve become all about her, and it would’ve stayed that way because of the habits you both picked up from the start. If she were to come back now, she’d be more stable, and you would have a more evenly balanced relationship than an unhealthy one that’s dependent entirely on you . . . Elena’s your baby vampire, but she’s been that since before she turned.”

“That’s not true.”

“As someone from the outside looking in on you two, I disagree, and I know it’s a consequence of how devastated she must’ve been after her parents died, but there needs to be a better balance. You lose people, compromise your principles, and last night turned yourself into a villain for her, and it’s all so she doesn’t have to lose anyone else when neither of you should be letting the other lose anything for the other. Any other arrangement is unfair and kind of toxic.“ 

“What business is it of yours – “

“At least part of my business is the prevention of future calamity, remember? You both need to do better.”


	46. Any Convention Worth Its Salt

I got my dress finished just before training, but training ended when the convention was supposed to start. I figured it wouldn’t take long to get ready, but at this point, I was going from being fashionably late to just late. I was a little surprised that nobody had come knocking on my door yet. It was possible that the people I lived with had finally taken the hint that I hadn’t been in the best of moods the last day or so and had decided to give me space, but I would’ve thought Damon would come escort me as his date. And where was Rebekah? Either she hadn’t been at April’s the way I’d thought and April hadn’t told her what I’d said, or she was there and had just decided not to come. That was fair, I suppose, all things considered.

I finished up my hair, quickly did my makeup, and rushed to my bed, so I could start putting on my boots. They actually worked with the dress now, since Caroline had settled on a Gothic theme. It went with the invitations, and she’d said that would make it less like one of the high school dance themes that I despised. I’d cut the bottom half of my dress from the ball off, so it was just above the knees, and had created a new hem for it. The bodice part had been fine, and with the boots, I thought it was an outfit that would be suitable. I mean, knee-thigh high boots might’ve been better, but those always had heels, so I never bought them, and these black combat boots would do. 

The knock for me finally came when I was finishing up on the second boot. “Yeah, I know I’m late. Just a second.” Finally done, I got up and went to the door, ready with an excuse. “Hey.” Any excuses I’d been contemplating completely evaporated. “Didn’t realize I was that late.”

 _Well played, Rebekah. Well played._ She’d only gone and invited her brother, and it wasn’t one of the two I knew. My head automatically turned in the direction of the rest of the house, but I couldn’t step out past the threshold of my room to see where the others were. To keep from doing anything rash, I had to assume they’d been just been incapacitated so Rebekah could have her fun. She wouldn’t have killed anyone yet, but this guy? All I knew about Kol was that he apparently hated that his birth right of being a witch had been taken from him when he became a vampire and was therefore obsessed with witches; he had a strong dislike of his brother; he knew multiple languages; his journal was well written, so he was intelligent; and his siblings couldn’t control him, so who knew what he’d done while Rebekah was focused on her two main targets, Stefan and Elena.

When my gaze flicked back to him, I caught the tail end of him giving me a smarmy once over as he said, “I never understood the allure of the Petrova doppelgangers, but then, you are an anomaly, and I find those fascinating . . . Eve, is it? I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Kol.” He offered me his hand, and I gave him a look, like ‘you have got to be kidding me.’ He smoothly withdrew the offer and placed his hand in his pocket, like he hadn’t just been rejected as he said, “My sister asked me to entertain you while she speaks to your flatmates.”

“I suppose I should be flattered if she thinks I’m worthy of being guarded by the wild child of the Mikaelson bunch.” Using the door to hide my movements, I discreetly palmed an explosive ping pong ball from the bag on my desk as I glanced in the direction of the rest of the house again and continued, “But I know she’s primarily focused on two of my roommates, and Damon isn’t one of them, so where is he?”

“I’m afraid your boyfriend didn’t make it this far.” Not allowing myself to react to that, I slowly looked back up at him, and he laughed before turning his head to look down the hall as he said, “Oh, he tried, but I owed him one.” 

I hoped it was a proportional response and snapping Damon’s neck was all that Kol had done while letting Damon know he was going to pay me a visit afterwards. Of course it was also just as likely that he’d killed him while saying the same thing. I needed to get out of here to see for myself which it was. “And Alice - your ex from almost a 1000 years ago - where’s she?”

I’d been waiting for another laugh, and I got one, just not they type I'd been expecting. It wasn't one at her expense the way his first laugh had been at Damon's. It was a charming chuckle bore of having no idea what I was talking about as his face turned back in my direction to find out who that was. “A – “ 

Shoving the ping pong ball in his opened mouth, I thrust up under his jaw with the palm of my other hand to make it explode between his front teeth. Luckily for me, his indestructible head muffled most of the impact from the blast and the sound. As smoke poured out of his nose and mouth, he turned away from me and brought his hands up to clutch his face in agony. I pulled the white oak ash dagger that I’d had in case Rebekah misbehaved from my thigh sheath while stepping forward to grab him and jammed the blade into his heart from the side of his back. Helping him to the ground, I made sure that the dagger stayed in his heart until he was completely down, then turned to look down the rest of the hall. There was Damon’s body, not even 10 feet from the door. How had I not heard that scuffle? Damn hair dryer. 

Crouching over Damon, the first thing I checked was his chest. No holes. Rolling him over, there were none in his back either, so he still had his heart. He clearly still had his head too, and on closer inspection, his neck did appear to just be broken. Exhaling a sigh of relief, I grabbed him under the arms and started dragging him to my bathroom, where he’d be safe. After I got him there, I popped a couple of Imelda’s herbal remedy capsules, emptied a plastic baggie holding some cosmetics in it, cleaned the bag out somewhat, and then placed it on my hand that’d been damaged in the blast from the ping pong ball before finding a role of tape to make the bag airtight around my wrist. There was a greater risk of giving myself away with the smell of blood than there was of me making a sound even with the plastic bag.

As soon as I was situated, I went in search of Alice. She was on the floor of her room with a broken neck. The window was open, and I’m fairly certain that meant I needed to call a house meeting on security around here. Nobody ever locked anything except for me, and the few times I did lock the front door, I was given a hard time about it. At least if her window had been locked, then anyone wanting to come into this room from outside would’ve had to smash the window, and she would’ve heard it. I had to give Rebekah some credit though. 

She could be stealthy when she wanted to be. Look at how she’d kidnapped Damon from this house for her brother, and if this was her entry point tonight, then her plan had been well thought out. This used to be her room, so she knew the lay of the land, and she must’ve suspected that we’d moved Alice into this room since it’d mostly been ready for use when she got here. If she knew Alice was a potential threat and that Kol would get unpredictable at the sight of Alice, then she must’ve just decided to eliminate the uncertainty that Alice would’ve brought to the proceedings by crawling in through the window and surprising Alice as she came out of her bathroom. Rebekah walking into the party from this direction isn’t something the others would have expected, particularly if Kol was at the door to distract them. 

Yeah, I was impressed, and she hadn’t actually killed Alice, which I took as a subtle sign that while she might be pissed about what had happened to her, she really was trying to focus that anger on the two she thought deserved it rather than everyone here. It showed a distinct difference in the way she thought compared to Klaus.

I crept closer to the main part of the house and heard Rebekah. She was berating the other two, but she hadn’t killed them yet. She was looking for the cure. Hm. Maybe Klaus knew she’d want it, and that’s why he’d daggered her. 

She was another player in a game that shouldn’t be played, but she was also confronting her bullies, and she may not be playing by rules that a human would, but she was also a supernatural girl in a supernatural world, so she was going to be rough. I was, and I was just a human in a supernatural world. If Elena was still human, then without a doubt, I would’ve stepped in at that moment, but Elena wasn’t human anymore, so I mostly thought that as long as Rebekah didn’t actually kill them, then maybe she should have her minor victory over those two. I’d intervene before she did anything too diabolical, but for now, I had to see about the other Original in the house. 

Slinking back down the hallway to her brother on the floor, I grabbed him under the arms too, and muttered, “You are not invited in,” to make it clear before pulling him into my room and dropping him on the floor. He hadn’t had the dagger in for long, so I didn’t know how long he’d be down, but I hoped it wouldn’t be more than 15 or 20 minutes. Giving Rebekah more time than that wasn’t a good idea. 

I sat Kol up against my heavy wardrobe and took some ropes to tie him to it before taking half a dose of vervain out of one of my darts and using one of my syringes to jab it into his neck. I didn’t want him knocked out. I wanted him super weak. When I was done, I pulled the dagger out of his heart, popped a couple more of Imelda’s pills and sat on my bed to wait. 

10 minutes later, I was removing the bag and flexing my hand that barely seemed to have a scratch on it anymore. Imelda was right. They may not be as fast as vampire blood, but they did work, and I couldn’t afford to chance taking vampire blood tonight when I was dealing with Original vampires. It was bad enough that I still probably had Elena’s blood lingering around in my system after last night, but why make it a sure thing by taking more now? 

I heard a knock at my bedroom window that disturbed me from my thoughts. When I opened the curtain, I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe that Rebekah had finally decided to check on her brother and was trying a backdoor tactic to find out if he was in here when she didn’t see him outside my room, but it wasn’t Rebekah. We seemed to be overrun by a plethora of Originals tonight. I suppose that made sense. It was a vampire convention, and any vampire convention worth its salt must have Originals in attendance too, particularly the ballsy conventions that had tables of vampires with causes against one or more members of the Original family, whose own cause was them against the world.

Klaus’s eyes flicked from his brother back to me, and he gave me a disappointed look before pointing at the latch, like I’d better open the window. With a petulant sigh, I did just that, but he didn’t tell me to let his brother go the way I’d thought he would. “You didn’t tell me you were inviting Kol.”

For vampires that’d spent the greater part of the last century essentially comatose, his siblings sure did catch on quickly to modern conveniences, like cell phones and cars, possibly even planes. “I think he might be your sister’s plus one.”

Looking around my window frame, almost like he was sizing it up, he smirked to himself and said, “Then I’m sure you have your hands full. I only came to get what we discussed.” 

I’d said more than once that if he came here tonight, it’d be to kill everyone. He seemed to know I’d think that and was letting me know it wasn’t his intention, and he might be saying that he was here to get the white oak stake, which I really should have expected him to do as soon as possible after the attack on him, but I’d also say he’d been lurking around for a while trying to decide what he was going to do about what the others had done yesterday. Then he saw his sister and brother show up and decided to let them deal with everyone. He’d had a change of heart though. 

He didn’t want everyone in this house punished. His timing and choice of windows was just too suspect otherwise, and I thought that if he was able to feel something other than anger right now, something like curiosity or concern, then there might be hope for him showing mercy to the others eventually. After all, I knew he was capable of it. “And to say thanks?”

Looking more pointedly at his brother, he responded, “I see you’ve made good use of the dagger already,” before his eyes flicked back up to me, like ‘that should be enough of a thanks.’ 

Maybe now wasn’t the best time to be asking him for anything. There’d been a half-formed thought niggling away in the back of my mind all day, and I hadn’t been able to put my finger on what was irking me until my instructor bopped me on the head with his staff and told me I was training like an unfocused toddler. That hidden thought had to be at least part of what had put me into a mood today. If what’d happened to Klaus meant that his compulsion had worn off on vampires, then it must’ve also worn off on that little girl from this last summer. 

I could just ask Damon to go with me to compel her, and Damon would do it, but me asking is the only reason he’d do it. Deep down, Klaus, would care more about it than Damon ever could, so I knew he’d get it right. He did the last time. I also felt strongly that it was Klaus’s responsibility to clean up that mess, because he’s the one who created it, and it was important that Klaus be able to atone for what he’d done that day. To rob him of that opportunity would be wrong, not so wrong that I wouldn’t ask Damon to do it if Klaus refused, but wrong enough that I thought he should have first dibs, because I honestly believed that he’d do the right thing if it was presented to him in the right way, just maybe not right now. “You know what? I’m gonna wait for you to cool off before we talk about it.”

His mouth drew into a straight line, and his eyes narrowed as he debated with himself on whether or not he should ask. Looking like he thought he was going to regret it, he finally asked, “What do you want?”

I really shouldn’t push it right now, but it wouldn’t hurt to just get the information I needed to build my case for the next time I saw him, would it? “Were those vampires last night the vampires you had compelled in your house?”

Yeah, definitely not in a great mood. His expression became quite stony as he retorted, “Why don’t you ask your friends?”

“I would, but . . . “ Looking over my shoulder in the direction of the house, I shook my head before muttering, “I think I’d rather hear it from you than ask them for more details. It’s a particularly touchy subject, and I’m creating an inhospitable environment around me at the slightest provocation today.” I had a pretty good idea what happened. In order to gain access to Klaus when his guard was down, somebody had to have talked to his minions and made a deal: Find loopholes in your compulsions that will allow you to help us bring Klaus down, and you can have Klaus and Rebekah to do with what you want when the compulsion breaks for good. I just didn’t know if getting them involved had been solely Hayley's suggestion or how her plans had been changed because of their plan. Either way the others had done a lot of the heavy lifting for her.

When my attention returned to Klaus, he seemed a little less icy. “You’re angry.”

I didn’t particularly want to get into all the reasons why with him, but yes. Yes, I was. I just wasn’t angry with him. I would have handled him entirely differently last night if I’d known it was him, and if I had, then he wouldn’t have killed that last vampire, and as for Carol . . . I’d liked her well enough. She’d tried, but she’d mostly been in over her head with everything going on in this town. That didn’t mean she deserved to die. If anything it made me feel more sympathy for her, and I felt bad for Tyler too, but he and the others had hit Klaus first. Now they were all upset because he’d hit them back, but that’s how these things worked. He wasn’t worse than them. He just understood that if it’s kill or be killed, you don’t pull your punches, and if you are under attack, you fight back hard to make your opponent reconsider attacking you again.

“At so, so many things, Klaus. Would you believe that I tracked a girl down today over waffles?” The corners of his mouth curled up into a slight smile, and I asked, “So, were those vampires the ones you had compelled at your house? I know there were some.” Not 12, but definitely some. He must’ve brought in enough for there to be 12 when he’d been toying with the idea of turning me, because he’d figured an even dozen should do it and just kept them on when that didn’t happen for protection or as spies around town, probably both.

“You’re far too intelligent for that to be what you’re really asking.”

Had his compulsion really been broken for everyone he’d compelled? That’s what I was asking. He might know that, but he wasn’t going to offer the answer unless I was more direct. He’d continue dancing around it in the off chance I wasn’t asking him to say that he was screwed now that his formerly-compelled enemies around the world had been released all at once, because who wanted to admit something like that if the other person didn’t already know it for sure? I decided to bypass the tumultuous topic and ask what I really wanted to know. “What about the little girl?”

Immediate annoyance, “What – “ and then his face fell as he realized what I meant. “The one from this summer.”

“It was broken for her too, right?”

“You want me to find her and re-do the compulsion.” I shrugged a shoulder, and he asked, “What was it about her that has made you her advocate, not once, but twice now?”

“I don’t know.” Looking to the side, I tried to picture her, and I wasn’t even sure if the image I had was an accurate representation of her anymore. My eyes flitted back to him, and I said, “The easier options would’ve been for her to hate us or completely shut down, but she didn’t do either. It didn’t break her . . . And as of last night, she probably woke up from a vivid memory she’d lost. The adults in her life probably brushed it off as being a nightmare. At best they might mention it to detectives assigned to the missing persons cases that had to have been opened, but they’ll think she’s unreliable because she suffered a trauma. When she gets to school on Monday, it’ll be the same, only more people will be brought into it when she draws what she saw with crayons or writes about it or her grades go down. She’ll be given a counselor or a psychiatrist, who will misdiagnose her. She’ll begin to believe that there’s something wrong with her when there isn’t. At that point, she really will be broken, but it won’t be because of what she saw. It’ll be because what she saw doesn’t fit into what the rest of society believes is real, and she deserves better than that.”

“I find it curious that you think she should’ve hated you.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt I was one of her villains that day.”

“You were her savior.”

“I was complicit in everything that happened until I stepped in to stop Stefan from biting her head off.”

“You were waiting to see how far we’d go.”

“Exactly.”

“That was the smartest thing you could’ve done under the circumstances. You didn’t know your companions yet.”

“Yeah, well, my way of thinking is a problem to innocent people sometimes. She absolutely saw me as one of you, and you are completely missing the – “

Tired of arguing, he cut me off. “Find her, and I’ll do it.”

“Really?”

He smirked before saying, “I think you underestimate how easy it will be to locate her.”

“The next time I see you, I’ll have where she is.”

“Then I won’t be surprised when it happens.” His attempt at good humor fell before he added, “I can see what you mean about making your environment inhospitable. I thought I told you no more experiments.”

I had no way of knowing when things were getting cold around me unless I saw evidence of it in things I touched or other people told me, so I suppose that meant that it'd happened again. “Who says – “

“I was there, was I not?”

“How much did you see?”

“It’s what I heard that troubles me.” 

Ducking my head, I focused on the window sill. He had heard me screaming. “That’s what woke you up?”

“Actually, I think it was a couple of rather loud sisters coming to blows.” Great, so he had been there to witness the entirety of me being at my most vulnerable. “You should know . . . I thought you were involved.”

A justification for why he’d stayed out of it was so much closer to an apology than I ever would’ve expected from him, but it wasn’t one I’d wanted. I hadn’t expected or wanted anyone to save me. I’d just wanted Bonnie to stop of her own accord. “I figured as much.”

“But even if I hadn’t, I’m not sure that I would’ve intervened. Your strength was remarkable to witness.” That is one of the reasons I would expect Katherine to not intervene, except she’d call it resilience. They really weren’t that dissimilar in how they perceived me, but he’d never admit it. Katherine might. She was more self-aware. When my eyes flicked back to him, he added, “And when the mob arrived, you demonstrated your prowess, but it really was too easy. It wasn’t until your prize lost his head that you unleashed your inner Huntress of the Ages, and she is magnificent. She resembles a warrior queen of old the way I’m sure you must’ve imagined her to be.”

I hadn't done anything other than stare him down, and I hadn't even known it was him at the time. Bowing my head, I grumbled, “She would’ve never - ”

“Even I can succumb to the power of witches.” He could, couldn’t he? That’s what’d happened last night. Connecting it to what I’d gone through almost made me feel a little better about not being able to stop my torture at a witch’s metaphorical hands. I gave him a considered look, and he said, “If only I could create more hybrids and watch you tear them all down. I think it would be the height of entertainment for both of us and possibly what we both need at the moment.”

He knew where I stood on the issue of the cure after finding out from Elena why we’d wanted to kill the 12th vampire somewhere else last night, but that wasn’t going to stop him from trying to find the cure. That’s really what he was letting me know. He must think his brother wasn’t far off of waking up if he was going back to hiding his true intentions with what was obviously a coded message. “Yeah, they seemed to be mostly useless for anything else if you ask me.” His eyes narrowed in jest at my mocking, and I asked, “If I made it impossible to find, would that do?”

He knew what I meant. “Nothing is impossible to find as long as it exists, and before you say it, Silas is a myth.”

“How is it more difficult to believe in Silas than something that was supposedly made for him?”

Shooting me a look, he glanced back at his brother before saying, “I’m keeping you from your guests. I’ll just take what we spoke about and leave you to it.”

I must really be running out of time with Kol, and I didn’t want Klaus to hear what I had to say to him. Going to my bed, I crawled under it and lifted a floorboard to remove the stake and a small vial of the anti-magic elixir that was tied to it in a bow made of leftover black ribbon from the invitations. I hesitated before replacing the floorboard, a secret hiding place I was never going to use again with him standing there. The vampires from around the world that he’d compelled and who might want revenge may not know where he was yet, but it was only a matter of time, and most of them weren’t vampires he’d have to worry about, but the vampires around here had managed to almost take him out twice now, so I couldn’t underestimate the unknown vampires out there. 

Uncorking the vial, I let a few drops fall on the stake before replacing the cap. He’d better not lose this stake again, but if he did, then hopefully that elixir would soak into the wood, and it’d no longer be indestructible. I went back to the window and handed him the package saying, “You’ve got blinders on right now, and it’s making you downright optimistic that there isn’t something negative wrapped up in you getting what you want.”

“The only negative you should be worried about is me not getting what I want.”

Klaus didn’t like to be told what to do on a good day, and right now he had to be feeling pretty vulnerable, so I couldn’t rise to his threat level or escalate it by giving him a demand, like ‘Don’t threaten me,’ or people would die. I had to be more nuanced than that and do the opposite without sounding too dismissive or backing down from my own position. “Threaten me all you want, but it doesn’t change that I’m the realist in this situation.”

He seemed to know that I’d been attempting to disarm the ticking time bomb in his brain, but instead of that making him act out, it was apparently the kind of camaraderie he’d needed, because he relaxed, and it wasn’t in an intimidating ‘calm before the storm’ kind of way. “And I think I am, so I suppose we’ll see who’s right at the finish line. I assume that’s where you’ll be when all of the other little hurdles you try to put in my way fail to keep me from getting there.” 

Was he telling me that I didn’t have to stay out of it now? “A real game?” 

“That your first thought is that it would be a game is the only reason I am willing to play it.” With a slight grin, he backed away from my window saying, “I’d say good luck, but . . . “

“There’s no such thing, anyway.” His smile grew before he was gone in a flash. I’d barely had the window closed and the curtains drawn 10 seconds when my Original fish out of water started to wake up on the other side of the room.


	47. Knight in Bloody Armor

Crossing my room, I picked up a pocketknife on my desk and crouched down in front of Kol with the blade against the rope. I wouldn’t keep him here for longer than necessary. Ignoring the weapons I heard falling as he started to thrash against the wardrobe, I ducked down to catch his eyes and make sure he was looking at me as I said, “While I have you here, I have a few questions. Is Silas real?” He was unable to speak and panicking, so I begrudgingly added, “Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

What? Who? What are you doing to me, and how do I get out of it? I saw all of these questions flash over his features. One blink.

“You know a lot about him?”

One blink.

“Would you ever want him to be freed?”

Two blinks.

“More than you want the cure?”

One blink.

I tantalizingly suggested, “With the cure, you could be a witch again.” He fought less after that, like he was taking the question more seriously than the physical discomfort for the first time, because he didn’t know how I knew that’d be important to him, and he wasn’t sure what I wanted his answer to be, but he knew there was a right one. The wrong one would get him that dagger back in his heart. “So if I said that the cure is with Silas, would you still want it?” 

That time, he considered the answer before shaking his head. Opening my bedroom door, I cut his ropes, and he shot out of the room and into the wall across from it. As plaster fell down around him, like snow, he slid to the floor, probably because of the vervain, and I peeked around the door to watch him before saying, “I have something that I think you might want.” 

“Unless it's your head on a silver platter, I highly doubt that.”

Oh, he so wanted to kill me as soon as he got his bearings back. I may have smirked as I got up and went to get his journal. When I came back with it, I knelt on the floor to be closer to his height, ever mindful of the invisible line that separated us, and held the book up for him to see. His eyes narrowed, and a second later, recognition washed over his features before he crawled closer to me. He’d definitely thought it was lost and gone forever. “Is that - “

“I’ve found it quite useful to be honest, and I’ve managed to translate most of the code in the margins . . . not a big fan of your brother, huh?” When he looked from the book to me, I tilted it in his direction and said, “Although I doubt what’s encoded is much of a secret. You do seem to be daggered more than anyone other than Finn was.” Stopping the journal just shy of the threshold, I asked, “So, Silas?”

Tearing his eyes away from the book again, he answered, “Silas would bring hell on earth, and I happen to like the world the way it is, so the last thing I’d want is for him to be released.”

Alice had said the he'd know more about Silas, but she hadn't said if it was because he'd want Silas as a drinking buddy. His journal on the other hand? Well, there was mention of a cult of witches from a few hundred years ago, and what had they worshiped? He didn't say. In fact, all he wrote about the object of their devotion was, 'I shall not give him power by speaking his name for as long as there are those who know of him, there would be those who seek to gain his favour, and his rise would be inevitable.' 

The first time I read it, I hadn't thought much of it. Maybe just that he'd been talking about some kind of extinct deity, but after what Alice had said, I read through the journal again looking for some kind of mention of Silas and that part got my attention. I also thought that from the way it was worded, those witches hadn't lasted very long after he wrote it. I hadn't planned to go looking for him or anything. It'd really just been to verify my own thinking on Silas, but here he was on my doorstep, and I'd hoped that he still felt the same way about it. Guess he did. “Well, then I think you arrived just in time, because everyone around here, including Klaus and Rebekah, are looking for the cure that’s buried with him.” 

Sitting back, he watched me, and his eyes narrowed. “To do that, they would need – “

“One of The Five with a road map to where Silas is tattooed on him? The tattoo isn’t complete yet, but check.” Should I have mentioned Jeremy? In my mind, there was no other way around it. I wouldn't let him hurt Jeremy, but Kol needed to know how dire the situation was. Besides, he'd find out anyway, and I needed him to trust that I was on his side when it came to Silas. 

“They might have the map, but without – “

“The key, they won’t be able to translate it? It’s a sword. Klaus has that, so check.” 

“Okay, but they would still need – “

“The spell to release Silas is embedded in the tattoo.”

“Do they have – “ I waited for him to finish that time, and he paused before saying, “Don’t stop now. Please do continue giving me every piece of information I need, so that I no longer have to keep you alive.”

“Do what you’ve gotta do when this is all over, and I’ll do the same, but right now I’m co-opting you onto my team. You’re not a pawn. You’re a knight, a little unorthodox in your moves, but still an important game piece.”

Intrigued, he leaned forward. “Who are we playing?”

No offense to Klaus, but this was bigger than just him. “Silas.”

He seemed skeptical. Probably expected me to say his brother. “Silas?”

“He’s the one who has positioned everyone where they are right now.” Without Connor being sent here, not even Klaus would be involved. This was all down to Silas through Shane.

“Hate to break it to you, but unless I’ve missed something, he’s still locked up.”

“And yet he’s managed to set everything in motion from where he is. There’s a man who found him, and Silas told him what to do.”

Exhaling a laugh, he argued, “That’s not possible.”

“Go tell that to the guy locked up in the cellar, who is repeating Silas’s name over and over again, like it’s a noun, verb, adjective . . . you get the picture.” While Kol looked down the hall in the direction of the rest of the house, I added, “How he found Silas and what happened to make his mind short circuit aren’t as important as the fact that Silas gave him the list of everything he needs, so like I said, the people around here have the map. They have the key. They have the spell. They have a reason to go where Silas is because of the cure, and as for the blood sacrifices?” 

Kol looked at me with interest, and I said, “I’m not sure they’re needed in a conventional sense. I mean, they aren’t part of the spell to break Silas out of his prison from what I’ve read, but they are needed to power up the witch who can do the spell to release him and to bring down the veil. The second sacrifice of 12 was completed last night, and there’s a witch in town practicing Expression, who is tapping into the power of both sites. I think she’s a direct descendant of the witch who imprisoned Silas.”

Looking like a man deep in thought, he spoke more to himself than me as he muttered, “Could be worse. They don’t have the tombstone. A tracking spell with that would be the most direct way to find him.”

I didn’t know anything about a tombstone. Wait. “What would it look like?”

Annoyed with me interrupting his thought process, he snapped, “What do any tombstones look like? It’s an old hunk of rock.”

A hunk of rock? Was that what that sneaky bastard had at the cabin last night? “Then I may have seen it yesterday. It must be how the guy in the basement found him.”

“Excellent. You get rid of that tombstone, and I’ll take care of the sword. Problem solved.” Might as well have added, ‘And then you die,’ with the look he gave me. He went to get up from his place on the ground, looked a little dizzy, and forced himself to sit back down. Eyes narrowed, he asked, “Vervain?”

“A half dose. You should be fine soon.” 

I put the journal down and slid it across the floor to him. Picking it up, he flicked through it, and I watched him relax when he saw that it really was his journal and not just a random book with his journal’s cover on it. Snapping it shut when he was satisfied that nothing was wrong with it or missing in any way, he pointed it at me saying, “Don’t think that giving me this changes anything.”

Most people might see that as a threat. I mainly found it peculiar that he'd be warning me about the folly of trusting him. “I don’t. I fully expect you to try and kill me when this whole Silas affair is wrapped up.” Now, it was starting to look like he thought there was something wrong with me because of my lack of concern, and maybe he was right. “I’m used to giving people bad first impressions.”

Looking down at the book in his hands, he exhaled a laugh. “Now that you mention it, you don’t seem particularly good at saying ‘hello.’ You should’ve led with this.”

“Yeah, the first time I met Rebekah, I blew white oak ash in her eyes.”

“The implication being that if she told me to keep my hands off of you before we got here, which you must know she did, then you still found a way to win her over, and my sister loves to hold a grudge.” As his eyes lifted to study mine, I couldn’t help but note that they held an intelligence that I could relate to in some way. He had the same ability to piece together loose connections that I did, didn’t he? I mean he wasn’t a saint. He clearly had impulse control issues if Alice’s account of him was right, and I thought that it was, but the way his family saw him was definitely tainted by him failing to fall in line when they failed to see what he did about a given situation and were wrong about it. “If I’m a knight, then what are you?”

He must’ve seen something similar in me. That question seemed designed to confirm it. “The player of course.” 

A silent snort, and he grinned before saying, “If you’re half as clever as you are cheeky, this might make for an interesting game.”

I didn’t think he was necessarily talking about the game against Silas and his brother. Pretty sure he meant whatever cat and mouse game he had in mind for me after we won against the others. “Let’s just say that I’m ‘clever’ enough not to be the frog to your scorpion and not clever enough to make the people, who need to listen, hear what I’m saying with words alone, so I thought I’d start strong with you.” It seemed to have worked on some level. He’d questioned how close the others were to finding Silas, but he hadn’t questioned me or my motives. He knew where I stood on the matter, and he knew I was serious. That seemed to be enough for him to believe what I was saying. “But I’m guessing that you probably get that. Klaus is intelligent, but he’s more of a general, and you’re the advisor he should listen to more. It’s not a role you want, because you’d rather be off on your own living life to the fullest without any rules and being carefree, but that’s probably at least partially down to 1000 years of not being heard. It must be so much easier to just wash your hands of all of it and go your own way.”

“Until my brother, being the delight that he is, starts to infringe on me being able to live that life - something that happens far too often.” Squinting as he scrutinized me further, he smirked before saying, “Would I be right in thinking that everything that’s transpired here is what my sister meant by me entertaining you? Because I think you’ve been highly entertained throughout.”

Meaning, had Rebekah known I was going to fuck him up and sent him to me anyway without warning him about it? “I’d say she knows that what I find entertaining wouldn’t necessarily be considered entertainment to most people.”

Looking over his shoulder, he muttered, “How very diplomatic of you . . . Personally, I think that my services as a dutiful brother have been well and truly rendered, so it’s time for my darling sister to do some entertaining herself.” Slowing getting to his feet, he waited until he was standing before he looked down at me and added, “To be continued.”

No harm meant, but it was met with some pretty intense anger down the hall. “NO!” 

Uh oh. While Kol appeared to grapple with seeing a ghost, I moved to the furthest side of my door frame, so I could try to get a look at her without crossing the threshold. “Alice, it’s okay.”

I don’t know what the hell he said to her. It must’ve been in an old dialect of her first language. Could’ve even been her name in that language, but whatever he said, it set her off. A strong breeze blew past my room, and it picked him up along with it. Sticking my head out into the hall, I looked to my left, and yeah, she had him pinned to the ground. Lingering effects of vervain or not, he really hadn’t had the best of nights, so I tried to intervene. “Alice, stop. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

She gritted out, “He will,” and then slammed his head into the ground to emphasize each syllable as she snarled, “Stay. A-way. From. Her,” and I quickly got up from my spot to grab the nearest dart gun I had from a drawer in the desk and another smoke flash bomb for good measure. They weren’t for her. They were for him. By the time I’d stepped back out into the hall, he’d flipped tables and had her pinned by the throat to the nearest wall. She was still spitting out, “There will be nothing for you to continue. I won’t let you hurt her,” and he could’ve been trying to calm her down by reassuring her even if it wasn’t true or saying hello after 1000 years when he’d clearly thought she was dead, but were either of those what he was doing? Of course not. 

He was openly mocking her and seemed to find her being ‘feisty,’ as he put it, funny for some reason, and it really pissed me off. I’d spent how long now trying to boost her confidence, and here was the biggest demon from her past laughing at her and getting all up in her space, like her anger was a turn on? Fuck that. I shot first and then got his attention. “Hey, Knight in Bloody Armor!” He might be my knight in this game, but he sure as hell wasn’t one in shining armor, and I wouldn’t let him near her again even though I strongly suspected that he’d start chasing after her now that he’d seen her. He looked at me as the dart hit him in the side, and I added, “Treat her with some respect.”

He let her go. One step. Two steps. On the third step towards me, he started to go down as the full dose of vervain added to whatever was left of the other vervain. His knees hit, and then he face planted. I exhaled a laugh as I looked at Alice, but her expression said that maybe now wasn’t the best time for it. “What were you thinking?! You should’ve done that much sooner instead of talking to him, and what did he mean by 'to be continued?'”

“If it makes you feel any better, I messed him up pretty bad long before you woke up, Alice, but we need his help against Silas. You said it yourself. He knows more about the guy.”

“Help?“ Placing the palm of her hand on her forehead, she turned away from me saying, “Oh no, no, no, tell me you didn’t, Eve.” Looking back at me she said, “Tell me you weren’t making deals or – “

“More like we have a mutual interest in stopping the guy who wants to bring a bunch of dead monsters back, but when we succeed in that, all bets are off. I hurt him quite a bit.”

She opened her mouth to argue before her eyes caught sight of the crack in the wall across from my room, the debris of the first flash smoke bomb on his face, and then her eyes widened before narrowing as she asked, “What did you do?”

“Uh,” She was going to be annoyed with me for getting his attention by going overboard on the violence, wasn’t she? Looking down the hall towards the rest of the house, I answered, “Actually, I think we should maybe table that while we give him back to his sister. She’s been with mine a little too long.”

Her eyes widened again as she realized what I meant, and she started stalking down the hall saying, “What are we doing wasting time with him if – “ 

Reaching out an arm to block her path as she passed by my room, I muttered, “Hold up,” before walking back to where Kol was and picking him up by the hand, so I could start dragging him with me as we made our way down the hall. As we neared the end of the corridor, I sing-songed, “Oh, Rebekah,” and waited a few seconds before adding, “Thanks for bringing me a present, but a bottle of just about any kind of alcohol would’ve lasted longer even at a vampire convention. You should take your brother home. He’s had more than enough for one night.”

As we approached the corner, Alice tugged on my arm to make me stop and mouthed, “Something’s wrong.” I tapped my nose, ear, and then forehead to ask her how she knew that. Scent, hearing, or was she listening in on Rebekah’s thoughts? She tugged on her ear a couple of times and then her eyes turned into fearful globes as her head turned in the direction of the corner. Absentmindedly, she touched her nose and forehead before she grabbed my arm and started pulling me back in the direction of my room. 

I refused to let Kol’s hand go. He was our leverage to get my sister back, and his added weight helped me slow Alice’s speed enough that I was able to pull my arm from her grip before she’d dragged me all the way back to my room. We were still almost halfway there before I could stop and look back towards the end of the hall we’d just been about to exit. It was in time to see Rebekah step into view. She seemed quite smug. “I’m surprised it took you this long.”

“It didn’t.” Looking down at her brother, I added, “This is more like Round 3.” When I looked back up at her, I shook my head. “You’re not exactly in keeping with the spirit of the night, are you? I thought I said, formal gothic. You’ve gone completely casual.”

“Yeah, well you look . . . “ She paused to take in my attire before adding, “Quite lovely, actually. You’ll have to tell me where you got that dress.”

I took that to mean that she felt at least moderately apologetic. She’d had her reasons for being here and for doing what she’d done, but as far as she was concerned, those reasons had nothing to do with me, and she hoped that I understood that. I did, and I’d continue to respect our do-over so long as she hadn’t killed my sister. “Sure, but you’re gonna have to stop torturing my sister and Stefan now.”

“It’s the least they deserve.”

“Look, I get it. That’s why I let you have a bit more time than I should have with them, but I’m gonna need them back now.“

“I’m glad you said that.” With a smile, she looked to her side and said, “Go to Eve, and remember, no running in the hall,” before my sister, Caroline, and then Stefan came around the corner and started speed walking in my direction. Looking back at me, Rebekah added, “You can thank me later for injecting some life into what, by all accounts, was set to be a miserable party,” and then she was gone. 

By all accounts? Looking at the three heading my direction, my eyes narrowed. “Did you tell her my convention sucked?” My attention shifted to Caroline, and I added, “And I didn’t think you were coming.” She certainly wasn’t dressed for it. Rebekah had targeted Caroline from day one – I think because Caroline had the life she wanted - so she must’ve wanted to include Caroline in on this too for good measure. Whatever she’d said to get Caroline here had to have been life or death and on a time limit. Any other reason for Caroline to show up without adhering to the dress code would be unimaginable. Seeing my wheels turning as I focused on her, Caroline’s eyes widened, like she really wanted to tell me something, but couldn’t, and instead had to resort to waving for me to move back as a form of communication. 

The next thing I knew, Alice had started dragging me backwards again saying, “Let go of him and get into your room,” and I only had to wait about a second to find out why as a giant wolf came tearing down the hall after the others. If Caroline was here, I take it that was Tyler. Super human hearing sure would come in handy at times like this. At least I could’ve been at least marginally more prepared for it than I was now. My room was only about 20 feet away and yet still too far.

Dropping Kol’s hand, I pivoted around Alice to break her hold on me, and shoved her as hard as I could in the side, saying, “You’re invited into my piano room,” as she crossed the threshold into it. Stepping out into the hall, I added, “Stay there. I’ll be fine,” before ushering Elena and then Caroline into the room with the same invitation as they got to within a few feet of me. Their compulsion ended at that point, because they’d followed it to its conclusion by going to me, but Stefan was a different story.

He’d intentionally lagged behind to slow the wolf down and buy the others time, and now the wolf was way too close to him. All I had time to do as I sprinted towards him was yell, “Down,” as Tyler leapt at him from the back, then throw my flash smoke bomb to the ground somewhere near Stefan’s head in an effort to hide him. The smoke appeared in an instant and had the desired effect, but it also obscured Tyler from my field of vision. I just managed to slam myself against the wall as he came sailing out of the smoke cloud. He went past me, and I stepped away from the wall to take my shot. It was a vervain dart, so I didn’t know how many it’d take for it to work when he was in his wolf form, but it definitely got his attention. 

Skidding to a stop, he turned to take another run at me. Backing into the cloud, I was mindful that I might stumble over Stefan if he was still where I’d left him, but me going to him should’ve completed his compulsion, so he must be in one of the rooms to the side of us and was probably waiting for the right moment to get involved. I did not need him getting in the way and being bitten, which was likely with us being in such close-quarters. “Wherever you are, Stefan. Stay there.” 

After giving my position away, I hopped from the middle of the hall to the wall that was opposite the last one I’d flatted myself against and there was another whoosh of air as Tyler charged past me. This time it seemed to disperse the smoke a little more. Following Tyler, I exited the cloud again to get a couple more shots in on him and then quickly back peddled into the smoke, gun at the ready for the next time I saw him, but I kept on going when I came out the other side of the cloud. The window for being able to use the blanket of smoke as cover was quickly dwindling. I needed to start trying to make my way to one of the rooms and maybe see about switching to wolfsbane to speed up putting an end to this. 

There was his outline. It got bigger as he sprinted towards the smoke again, but as I pulled the trigger this time, I heard Damon yell, “Eve, get out of the way,” and without hesitation, that’s what I did. I went to the side of the hall again, and as the wolf came snarling through the smoke, it saw me, changed direction, and would have barreled straight into me were it not for a human-sized chew toy that was hurled into his path. 

That seemed to do the trick. The wolf stopped to start ripping and clawing and gnawing at it. As the smoke cleared enough for me to see who it was, I looked over my shoulder, and I’d say it was definitely Damon’s idea, but Alice was the one who threw Kol to the wolf, because she seemed quite pleased with herself as she dusted her hands off from where she was standing in the hall. While she’d done that, Damon must have been busy grabbing my dart gun with the wolfsbane darts, because with Tyler distracted by Kol, Damon emptied the clip into the him, and Tyler was down by the time Damon stood next to me in the hall. 

Looking up at him over my shoulder, I couldn’t help but grin, and he rolled his eyes as I said, “Told you Rebekah would be an excellent invite. Do I know how to throw a convention, or what?”

His anger had dipped substantially last night after he found out I hadn’t intentionally sided with Klaus over him, but he’d still been annoyed at the state I was in when I got home. It wasn’t until after he found out that a good chunk of my curse might have been removed, something that Imelda had confirmed when she was here earlier, that the rest of his anger at me doing my own thing yesterday had dissipated. He’d mostly been keeping his distance from me today because I was the one who had been in a mood, so it was relief that I saw cross his face as he realized that tonight’s entertainment seemed to have given me everything I’d needed after last night. There was a gleam in his eyes as he smirked in response. “I don’t know about conventions, but it’s definitely the worst party I’ve ever been to.” 

“The night is still young, and this was just the first team building exercise. I think it’s going rather well so far.”


	48. The First Annual Vampire Convention

Looking around at the décor of the living room, Caroline turned to me with a sigh. “You’re really doing this without me, huh?” 

I’d mentioned it to her earlier, so she wouldn’t get upset about it happening without her knowing about it, but I’d always known that when I decided to go ahead with the vampire convention tonight, she wouldn’t be able to make it, because she wanted to be there for Tyler in his time of mourning. If Rebekah hadn’t called Caroline using Elena’s phone and told her that she had 10 minutes to get here before she killed everyone in the house - most likely as a ploy to lure Tyler over here to do what she did - then Caroline never would’ve known what she was missing out on, but that did happen, and now she was reluctant to leave. Unfortunately, Tyler looked like he was ready to go after Stefan had gotten him a change of clothes. The last couple of days had not been kind to him. 

After a brief glance at him by the door, I nodded. “I think so . . . Everything looks okay?” 

I’d mostly followed through with her ideas. The dinner table had been set up in the living room. Luckily, Tyler hadn’t crashed through it or hiked his leg on it or whatever else he could’ve done to it as a wolf. There was a black table cloth, silver candelabras, white plates with black rolled cloth napkins on them, and crystal glasses. Each person had an assigned seat. Who was supposed to sit where was written in aged parchment at each setting. The centerpiece was a simple, but elegant bouquet of primarily white roses that’d had been drizzled in some gooey red paint that looked like blood. I hadn’t wanted them to be doused in real blood so close to the dinner table where I’d be eating. It’d only make the vampires eating next to me more hungry for me.

The flowers were in a vase that matched the candelabras. The lighting fixtures in the room had been replaced with black or silver ones that also matched the style of everything else. The refreshments table looked similar to the main dining table with the black table cloth, but instead of candelabras, there were stands for single, thick candles, and behind the punch bowl in the middle there was a European Gothic-style, silver mirror on a stand that’d remind almost anyone of the kind of mirror that Snow White’s wicked step-mother might’ve used. The refreshments table was also where the legitimate blood was. There was blood, blood, and more blood over there, from the punch bowl that had been spiked with it along with alcohol to the blood bags that’d been laid out in neat rows. There were stacked bottles of wine and bottles of whiskey and bourbon too. 

I hadn’t really let Caroline change the curtains, because if she had, then we would’ve had to reupholster the chairs, couch, and rugs that they matched, so they were still a dark red and floor-length, but we’d replaced the golden fringed trim with black trim and had gotten black rope ties. Alice’s dress that she got yesterday with Caroline actually matched the red in the curtains. It was primarily a bodice top, like mine, but instead of the skirt sort of flaring out at the waist, it hugged her body, was long, and there was a slit up the side. She was the only one wearing a top hat, but it looked good. Elena’s dress looked more like mine, except instead of it being a rich violet, hers was black with silver details. 

Stefan was dressed in a more traditional Gothic-design. The jacket was grey, long enough to go down to his knees, and he had a ruffled white shirt underneath. I bet if he took his jacket off, that with the vest and the puffy sleeves on that shirt, he’d look like he walked straight out of Interview with the Vampire, just with shorter hair. Damon had gone more modern with his attire. There was something very punk rock about it. His jacket was velvet, embroidered, and went down to just above his knees. The ends were cut so they were shorter at the sides and came to a point at the front and back. His vest underneath matched the jacket, and everything was black except for the shirt he had on underneath. He must’ve spent most of today looking for a shade that matched my dressed exactly. 

If nothing else, it looked like it was going to be a kick ass Halloween party that was a couple months too late. I could see why Caroline wouldn’t want to stay. “It looks great.”

“Yeah?”

She smiled before looking around again. “Well, I think I might’ve put that – “

Before she could get too involved in critiquing as a way to deflect from her disappointment of not being here, I asked, “What about Christmas?” She quickly turned back to me, and I said, “We’ll probably be spending it at the lake house. You can organize something there. I’m thinking not everyone is going to be up for celebrating too much, but I don’t think anyone is going to want to be left alone either.” I cast another brief look at Tyler to drive my point home before continuing. “And I know that you and Bonnie are kind of the only ones left with parents with the exception of Matt, whose Mom really doesn’t count, so if you want to invite yours and hers, you can to make sure they aren’t left alone over the holidays.”

Her eyes sparkled as she hopped in place and clapped to try and contain her excitement. With a little squeal, she threw her arms around me before saying, “I promise it’ll be something we all remember forever. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Patting her on the back, I rolled my eyes in faux-annoyance before muttering, “Yeah, well, like I said, it’s the first Christmas some of us are going to be having without our families, so maybe try to keep it low-key.” 

I was mostly talking about Tyler, but when she pulled back to look at me, she sobered a little. Yeah, it felt like forever ago given everything that’d happened since, and it’s not like I’d spent Christmas with either of my parents last year while I was holed up in that apartment carrying out surveillance on Elena and the people in her life, but both of my parents had died this year too, and she seemed to get that. “Message received, loud and clear.” She tossed a look at Tyler over my shoulder before saying, “I should probably go.”

And here was the moment of truth. I gave her a nod before turning and walking with her to Tyler at the door. We got there, and I briefly bowed my head. “Hey, Tyler . . . about your Mom – “

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Yeah, no, I get that . . . I just wanted to say that if you blame me, I get it, so if you don’t see me at the funeral – “

I was caught off guard as he tearily stepped forward to wrap me up in a hug that was almost too tight. “You think after making me stick around to watch your Dad’s entire morbid funeral, that I’m going to let you out of it that easy?” I wasn’t sure his question warranted an answer. Reaching up behind him I gently returned the embrace, and he shook his head. “I know you don’t think it, but you are part of my pack, and I know whose fault this is. It isn’t yours, okay?” I nodded before patting his back to let him know I was done with the hug, and he exhaled a sad laugh as he released me. “Are you going to show up as Death of the Endless again?”

I warily answered, “If it gets a laugh from the right crowd?”

“Then I think you should . . . Being in on a joke when maybe one other person in the entire town get it feels like the kind of thing I need right now. It’s better than being one of the only ones in on the secret about what really happened.”

“Whatever you need.” He nodded before ducking his head, and then he flicked his eyes to Caroline as he tilted his head in the direction of the door, and they were gone.

I was on my way back into the living room when Stefan stepped in front of me. “Can we talk?”

Oh for fuck’s sake! “Now?”

He offered me a sad smile. “If not now, then when?” I didn’t respond - mainly stayed stoic - because as a convention, I figured that business would be discussed, and maybe this counted as such, but if he harshed my buzz, I was not going to be happy about it. “I know . . . Okay, believe me, I get it. You have every right to hate me. I hate me for what I did, and – “

“Which thing that you did? Because you’re really starting to rack up quite the tally.” 

There was the attempted turning and the antics that he’d pulled last night on top of him being a dick while he was going after Klaus and what he did over the summer. He was momentarily unsure of how to proceed, and I shook my head before trying to go around him. “Eve.”

At his dejected tone, I paused next to him and said, “From the day that she turned, you’ve been avoiding that she’s a vampire or trying to fix it, but what the hell did you expect from her when she was a human if it wasn’t this?”

His shoulders fell as he exhaled a soft sigh. “I would’ve done the right thing by her. I know she wanted a family, so I would’ve walked away, because I love her . . . It’s not that she’s a vampire. It’s that she never wanted to be one, and now she is because of me. That’s the problem.”

“Is it? Or is it that deep down, her turning and spending eternity with you is what you were hoping for all along, and now your guilt is making you obsessed with either fixing it or sabotaging it to prevent you from having what you wanted since it is oh so very wicked?” 

“I would’ve done the right thing by her.”

“Right. You said that, and I believe you, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have been a sacrifice on your part, and for it to have been a sacrifice, it would’ve had to be something you didn’t want to do but still did to make her happy. . . Admit to yourself that her turning is what you wanted, and it’ll be a start. Should flow eventually into thinking that it was okay for you to want to spend the rest of your life with someone you love, because it’s what most people want, and from there to realizing that just because you wanted it doesn’t mean you made it happen. She doesn’t blame you even a little for her being a vampire, so why do you? Then you can move onto seeing that it doesn’t matter what you wanted or she wanted, because this is the hand you’ve both been dealt, and unfortunately, it sounds like that means that for her it’s over.” 

He glanced at me, and I admitted, “Caroline told me what Elena said when Rebekah asked her if it was really over ‘just like that.’” She’d been compelled, so she couldn’t have lied about it “Can’t really say that I’m all that surprised, and maybe some of it is down to how over the top you get sometimes on things like proving to her how bad you are for her or going after Klaus to her detriment or the unhinged things you’ve been doing lately, and maybe some of it is down to her being a vampire now, but I think this was always going to happen.”

“No, what we had – “

“What you had lasted for a school year, and it’s been hit or miss ever since you left with Klaus, which probably makes it a great high school romance, but that’s what it was, a high school romance. You looked 17 when you met her, but she actually was 17, Stefan. You’ve had a long time to figure out what you want, but she’s just getting started on it . . . I mean, she hasn’t even graduated yet. She’ll be starting college in a few months . . . It’d do her some good to see what she wants out of life, and maybe when she does, she’ll eventually find her way back to you, but don’t do what Damon did. Don’t put your life on hold for the next 160 years while you wait for it to happen. Take solace in the fact that you will always be important to her, because you were who she needed to meet to help her become who she is going to be as a person, and try to move on from it.” 

Hanging his head, he nodded, and I said, “Personally, I think that should be with Katherine.” His head snapped in my direction, and I smirked. “What? You have a type - one that’s based entirely off of her - she’s single, and she definitely knows how to handle you.”

His brow furrowed, and his eyes narrowed as he tried to figure out if I was being serious. “What . . . what are you talking about right now?” I could make it happen. My eyebrow arched to indicate that, and he quickly shook his head. “No . . . no, that is the absolute last thing I want.”

“You sure about that? There’d be no real work involved on your part. I mean don’t go ripper or anything, because even she doesn’t like that guy, but she does care about you every bit as much as she says she does. She’s just not very good at showing it.”

“Eve, I didn’t want to talk to you, so we could spend the whole time talking about Elena, and I certainly don’t want to talk about Katherine, but you’ve somehow managed to drive the entire conversation over a cliff, because you don’t want to hear what I have to say yet.”

“And what’s that?”

“I wanted to apologize to you. I miss the friend I was starting to have. Some of the best conversations I’ve had with anyone in decades have been with you in our classes, and I’m sorry that I ruined that.”

“Mm . . . Then I’ll tell you the same thing I told Damon after he killed Jeremy and wanted to get back in Elena’s good books. You did the crime, so you need to stay in the doghouse for as long as I deem it necessary, but it’s going to take you sticking around to make it right again, because it’s hard to stay mad at someone who is always there . . . I’m not going to make it easy on you though.” He gave me a hesitant nod, and I said, “So about Katherine . . . “

“No!”

“All it’d take is a call from me, and – “

“Don’t even think about playing matchmaker. I don’t want - “

“I don’t know. I’m pretty good at it. Just ask Caroline.” 

He was momentarily lost for words, and then his eyes narrowed again. “I don’t miss our conversations that much.”

“That’s probably a good thing. Katherine doesn’t like to share, so she’ll want all of your conversations to be with her.”

I carried on my way past him, and he sped to get in front of me again. “Eve, no!”

The corner of my mouth curled up into an impish smile. What a perfect way to avenge the attempted turning incident without bringing the cure into it now that Silas was involved, and if it worked, then Katherine and I should be square for all eternity. “Why don’t we ask your brother what he thinks?”

Before he could respond, Damon came around the corner asking what was going on, took one look at each of us, and then Stefan started telling on me to his big brother in a way he probably hadn’t done since he was human. Damon heard it all, processed it, and then snorted as he turned away from us with Stefan chasing after him and telling him to talk to me. Second team building exercise complete, it set us up nicely for the dinner. Kol was still passed out. Couldn’t exactly put him downstairs with the professor, so I propped him up in a seat next to me.

As far as conversation pieces went, I didn’t think I could’ve done better than Kol. Nobody wanted him there, but I wouldn’t budge on it. I kept insisting that he belonged at the table, because he was definitely against Klaus, which fit the criteria for him having a cause and being there. By the time dinner was nearing an end, he was starting to wake, and some of the things that came out of his drowsy head were pretty funny, particularly when he picked up on the anti-Klaus sentiment around the table, but he was doped up on werewolf venom, so I couldn’t let him stay awake long. 

After the excitement from earlier, nobody was expecting for there to be more, so when I brought in the velvet blood cupcakes for dessert, nobody saw it coming when I shot both Kol and Stefan with vervain darts. The huntress may not have taken any heads, but those two certainly weren’t going to get their desserts, and I think the unexpectedness of it, despite how it lined up with our joke, made it a genuine surprise for Damon, so it was the highlight of his night. He didn’t stop laughing for ages even though Elena got a little annoyed with me, but she’d also been annoyed with me for leaving her with Rebekah for so long. I wasn’t worried about it. I still had time to get through to her.

I did with Alice because without Stefan, we had an even number of people to play on teams for _Pictionary_ after dessert. Much like me, she’d never played it, but she absolutely loved it. She kept wanting us to do more rounds until Damon got bored, and then we turned the living room into a nightclub. That’s what had made Elena’s night. By then, the alcohol was freely following, and it appeared that liking to dance was something that she and I had in common. 

She even managed to talk Stefan into staying after he woke up in a snit. Overall, I’d say it was a fairly successful night. Damon was happy with it, and that’d been the entire point. It was even more important after everything that’d happened yesterday. I think it’s something we'd both needed.


	49. Politics 101

We decided to postpone Jeremy’s training until after Carol’s funeral. It gave us time to figure out what to do with our very sick Original Vampire. I knew that Rebekah had eventually had the werewolf venom wear off at her party, so Kol would too, but he’d gotten a lot more of it than she had. He was hallucinating for days, which meant he spent most of that time being a handful. Couldn’t leave him with Klaus, because after Klaus had gotten the white oak stake from me, he'd gone MIA, and since Rebekah had essentially abandoned Kol with us, we couldn’t be sure that she’d mind him the way he needed, so he’d had to stay with us until the worst of his symptoms had abated. It would’ve been bad to let him wander off in a mental haze to ravage the town. 

The funeral was yesterday, and Kol’s fever dreams seemed to have broken last night, so he was mildly sedated in the back of the car with Alice, who was keeping an eye on him while Damon and I stopped at the Mystic Grill for an impromptu meeting of the Founder’s Council with Liz. After that, Damon and I were going to drop Kol off with his sister and would be heading to the lake house. Alice was coming with us, because I didn’t want to leave her behind with Kol around. It just didn’t seem like a good idea. I didn't want him pestering her, which he would most likely do the first time he got bored. 

Whatever the story was there, he seemed to think teasing her was still on the cards when he did see her, and she mostly looked like she wanted to stake him out under the sun and take his ring to make him suffer. My guess was that there might have been some Original family shenanigans going on in the background, like she’d been told something by one of them and forced to leave, and he hadn’t known that and was told she’d died . . . something like that. I just couldn’t get over the look on his face when he saw her that first night. He hadn’t known she was alive. I was sure of it. 

“So, we’re in agreement?”

Ugh, the council meetings were so boring. I’d spent most of this one going back and forth between trying to work out what the deal with Kol and Alice was and coming up with grand plans for the council that were most likely going to get shot down. I also got some entertainment from playing around with my ice. I’d been reduced to getting my daily water intake through ice cubes and ice chips lately, and I was in desperate need of some flavor, so I’d gotten lemonade that I couldn’t drink and after pouring the lemonade into an empty glass, I’d steal an ice cube before pouring the lemonade back into the ice to add flavor back into what was left. It’s a little routine I’d been doing since we sat down, but it didn’t look like Liz had gotten used to it yet as I finished my latest ice fishing expedition and triumphantly popped the cube in my mouth. While Damon ignored it by now, she mostly looked at me, like ‘you poor child,’ and the non-invasive motherly concern made me briefly smile. We weren’t particularly close, but I’d consider her a real loss if anything ever happened to her. 

Damon, also thoroughly bored with all of this, went first. “If it means that he’ll be in town to keep an eye on his witchy daughter, then I’m all for it.”

Meredith, who’d been watching me off and on, like I was a science project, was next. “Put me down as an ‘aye.’”

The next vote was me, and then that was it. That’s all that was left of the current Founders Council until Liz informed the replacements we’d decided on today of their new roles. So far, Mr. Hopkins was the only one I agreed on out of their picks. 

“Personally, I think it’s about time this town recognize that the so-called founding families of Mystic Falls were not the only founding families here at the time. I’m happy for Bonnie’s Dad to be on the Council. I think it’s even better if the four of us elect him interim Mayor if he said that’s what he wants, and I really want to know who his vervain hook up is if he can get the amounts he told you he could, so ‘yes’ to all of that, but I still think we should consider Tyler. I don’t care about his age for obvious reasons, and I don’t particularly care that he’s a hybrid. Werewolves, or people with the werewolf gene, have been running this town for a century and a half, so there’s precedent for it already. He’s the last Lockwood, and that has meaning, so he’ll take it seriously. Like Damon, he can come back every so many years and right this sinking ship of a town with what he knows and then disappear again, so we’ll have vampire, werewolf hybrid, human, and with what I’m hoping is a permanent addition of the Hopkins-Bennet family, witch to cover all the bases as far as factions are concerned in the future, which seems more equitable, and it’s necessary if the ultimate goal is protecting this town from anyone living or dead who may show up.” I paused. “Liz, you’re not writing any of this down.”

“Eve, we’ve been through this.“

We’d been through why they didn’t want Tyler on the Council, not the rest of it. “Not really. I’ve been thinking about it, and if nobody else in this town is aware of what’s really going on around here, then the people on the council still should, but it can’t be biased knowledge that’s based on journals written 150 years ago. We have a unique opportunity to get this right from the start this time around. With all the supernatural phenomena that happen here, you can’t kill every vampire who comes to town simply because they’re a vampire, because maybe you’ll need that vampire on your side someday. Case in point is the one sitting next to me, and I’m also thinking long term. There aren’t too many Fells left who are viable candidates. After you, that’s pretty much it, Meredith. The rest of what that family has to offer are entitled juvenile delinquents and morons.” Meredith started to protest, and my eyebrow arched as I added, “I go to school with them. I know.” 

Her mouth twitched to the side, and I focused back on Liz. “Caroline, the last Forbes, is going to be in the same position as Tyler and Damon someday. The same goes for Elena, because hunters shouldn’t have kids, which rules Jeremy and I out for the Gilberts. Technically the Youngs only go back a couple of generations, but they’re becoming legacies on the council, and if their new heiress doesn’t quickly learn what not to do, then she’s not going to make it. She doesn’t have any cousins, so that’ll be it for them. Bonnie’s the last Bennett that was raised in town. Unless you start thinking about the future, the entire council will be made up of vampires and a hybrid someday, maybe a witch if Bonnie’s lucky enough to have kids, and a few weak minded humans, which is just a recipe for disaster.”

Shielding her eyes with hand, Liz rubbed her temples with her thumb and middle finger asking, “What are you saying, Eve?”

“Make sure this Council and every Council in the future knows who the supernatural Council members are when they come into town, and look to other people in town to be on the Council, people like Matt Donovan, who knows what’s going on behind the curtain, has seen the bad associated with it, so he won’t be as naive as a complete novice, but who also knows it’s not all bad and sometimes alliances need to be made. We can’t just ask the baker – “

“Mr. Charltan.”

“Whatever. We can’t just ask a guy who has no knowledge about any of this to join and then spring it on him in the first meeting by giving him old family journals that he probably won’t even believe. He’ll come to the meetings for the cake and conversation, just like the last Council did, and then when he finds out vampires are real, he’ll make the same mistakes the last Council members did, and the wrong people will die, maybe even him. None of the people on this list will work, except for Bonnie’s Dad, because when it comes to the real goings on in Mystic Falls, it’ll still just be five of us hiding secrets from the rest of them. The Council can be small for now until there are enough of the right people on it, but it can’t simply be made up of either well to do business people in town or Founding Families if the goal is really supposed to be protecting this town and not simply treating it as a reward for the town’s elite.”

Liz looked exacerbated. I mean, I’d said ‘nay’ to everyone she’d suggested and followed it up with an ‘unsuitable,’ as my reason, but I hadn’t really gotten into why until now. Shooting me a look for waiting this long, because now he was second guessing his automatic ‘yes’ votes to get out of here early, Damon huffed out a harsh breath before focusing on Liz. “I think she’s looking to turn Mystic Falls into a utopia where werewolves, vampires, and witches can live together in peace with humans and work together against any outside aggressors.” Tossing me another, more considered look, he added, “Which we’re mostly doing already, but it’d be without us having to worry about the Council killing us as long as we play by the rules.” A brief pause, and he added, “I’m in.” 

We both looked at Liz, and her shoulders dropped. “So, are you saying – “

He smirked. “No to the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker.” 

Flattening her palms on the table and looking up to the heavens for strength, Liz murmured, “Meredith?” like she was looking for some help.

“I’m okay with us keeping it to the five of us for now until we find the right people.” Liz dropped her head to look at her, and Meredith exhaled a laugh. “Liz, this town has had far more than its share of deaths and supernatural occurrences. If we have a chance to do this right and not lie to everyone on the Council, then I think we should take it.” Glancing at me, she continued, “But I’m also not ready for this Council to be overrun with a bunch of 18 year olds. One is more than enough, so Matt Donovan and Tyler Lockwood are going to have to wait until they’re a little older, but when they do join, that’ll be 7, which is a good start. April Young might work out too if she knows now, but again, she’ll need to be a little older.” 

For the first time in a while, I felt pretty good. Maybe it was just my powers of persuasion with teenagers that was lacking. “Assuming she lives to be older.”

Pointing at me, Liz firmly said, “Which reminds me. We need to talk.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Her eyebrows rose in disbelief. “What? Are words a crime now?”

“No, words are not a crime, Eve.”

“Waffles?”

Trying not to smile, she glanced at Damon and Meredith before asking them for some privacy, and after they left, she gave me a good talking to about common decency and intimidation . . . and maybe about not crossing the threshold into people’s homes against their wishes, because if I did that to the wrong house someday, then I was going to get shot. Good thing she still didn’t know about what I did to Meredith. Speaking of the doctor, I was going to have to go through a whole new battery of tests with her after this newest development with my curse. I had planned to set an appointment up with her before I left, but this meeting had taken longer than I’d thought it would, and she was gone already, so it’d have to wait until after I got back from the lake house. It was more for her curiosity and mine at this point, since Imelda had let me know I wasn’t in any immediate danger of dying. Plus, it appeared like us working together on my physical health had at least had some positive impact on our relationship, or she wouldn’t have agreed with me just now, so doing the experiments with her was valuable time spent if it gave me another ally on the Council. 

Liz left, and I was just about to get up to go meet with Damon at the bar when Rebekah sat down in front of me. “Where’s my brother?”

I had no idea where Klaus or Elijah were, so I suppose she must mean Kol. “Are you sure you care? You were pretty fast to leave him behind.”

“I didn’t think you’d keep him.”

I wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been bitten. “He’s in the car. We were just driving him over to you. He had it pretty rough. Tyler bit him, so I took care of him until he was feeling more himself. Didn’t think you’d want to deal with babysitting him, and I figured that out of all of us, you’d trust me to do it.” To be honest, I was projecting just a little there. I was the one who hadn’t trusted anyone else but me to do it.

Biting the inside of her cheek, she nervously looked towards the door. “He blames me, doesn’t he?”

“Pretty much. Think it started before he was bitten, because he figured out that you knew that I wasn’t going to play nice with him, but the hallucinations really seemed to make it worse.”

Second-guessing the supposed reason she’d sat down, she hesitantly started to say, “Maybe Nik – “

“I already tried him, but he didn’t answer. I have no idea where he is, but wherever it is, it isn’t this town, and since he’s probably blowing off steam, it’s good that he’s not.”

She rolled her eyes with a sigh. “Fine. I’ll take him.” Focusing on me a little more, she took a slower, deeper breath before saying, “So the other night . . . if we had talked, what would you have said?”

“Well, for starters I was considering giving you the dagger he used on you if you wanted it.”

Her eyebrow quirked up. “I assume that offer is no longer on the table.”

After what she did? A grin slowly spread across my face, before I exhaled a laugh and said, “I am finding it difficult to let it go. I really want the whole set just to have them, but you did save the night for me, since everyone probably was a little maudlin before you got there, so . . . as a party favor, I suppose you could have it if you want it, but it’ll have to wait until I come back from the lake house.”

“Like you don’t have it on you right now.” I did. I had all 3 daggers on me right now, but I wasn’t ready to give any of them up yet. As I crossed my arms over my chest, she smirked, like she knew the answer before saying, “I guess you can keep your new toy until you get back as long as it’s out of Nik’s hands. What else?”

“Suppose I would’ve told you about what happened the other night . . . how they almost got rid of 2 Originals at once.”

Her expression darkened before her eyes narrowed, and then she rolled them again. “So I’d be okay with letting you keep the dagger, right?”

“Well, I honestly thought you should know, because you’d find out eventually, and that is a narrative I didn’t want getting away from me, but now that you mention it . . . “ I smiled, and she exhaled a laugh.

“What is it with you and these daggers? It isn’t just that you want to have them to hold over our heads.”

“It’s a long story. Klaus knows it. That’s why he let me keep it.”

I knew he kept his own secrets from everyone, but let’s see how good he is at keeping personal secrets about other people from his family. Her eyes squinted briefly as she tried to work it out, and then she asked, “Anything else?”

“I was going to tell you what happened to April’s Dad.”

“Why?”

“Because I think it’s great that you have a friend, and I thought you could use it for brownie points with her.” Her tongue felt along the inside of her upper teeth while she tried to work out what my angle for that one was, and I added, “Seriously, free of charge.”

“Or you were trying to make up for the fact that you were incredibly rude to her and didn’t want me, as her _friend_ to get involved.”

I snorted. “Oh please. I just had the sheriff lecture me about it, and I still maintain that I did nothing wrong. In order for me to scheme keeping you from being involved, I’d have to at least think I am at fault in some way that would make you want to get involved, but I don’t.”

Sitting back, she studied me briefly before saying, “Waffles really mean that much to you?”

“It’s not about the waffles . . . She’s mad at Elena. I get that, but just because I look like my sister doesn’t mean I am anything like her, so I don’t appreciate people, especially people I don’t know, taking whatever issues they have with her out on me, or at least I don’t when I’m not pretending to be her, and it might seem small, but I was willing to go out of my way to help the girl, and she’s the one who bailed. People around here fail me in big and small ways on a daily basis, and I reached a breaking point. All she had to do was text and say she wasn’t coming. Not doing that is what was rude.”

I sulked a bit, and she leaned forward again to rest her arms on the table. In a whisper so Damon couldn’t hear her, she asked, “What happened?” I didn’t immediately answer, and she clarified by tipping her head in the direction of my hand. I noticed how the glass I was holding had gone frosty and quickly let it go. “Something happened . . . What’d she do . . . Elena? This is about her, not April or anyone else around here. Is it the sire bond?”

I was quick to shut that one down. “No.” I knew she’d delved into that with Elena and Stefan the other night. After a quick shake of my head, I answered, “A lot of things . . . some small, some big, like I said.”

“What’s a big one?” She’d be compelling me right now if she could. “Is it the cure?”

“I’m guessing you know I’m not a fan.”

“Silas is a myth.”

“You sound like Klaus.” She gave me a stony expression, and I rolled my eyes. “I am sure that Silas is real, but if I didn’t, then I’d think that if anyone deserved the cure, it’d be you . . . sort of shitty that you’d be willing to die in 60 years or whenever and bring down your entire sire line with you, but if you could find a way to keep that from happening, then I suppose after 1000 years, it should go to you if you want it.” 

She relaxed somewhat. “She wants it. I asked her when she said you were against anyone finding it.”

“I know - not that she’s admitted it to me. I’m not particularly looking forward to going up against her over it if I’m being honest.”

Rebekah nodded in understanding. I suppose she was in a race to get there before her brother did too. “But that’s not all of it.”

“It’s more of a part of it than I’m letting myself think about at the moment.”

“What happened with your curse? I don’t remember it being this cold around you before I was stuck in that box.” Throughout her visit, I knew that she was mostly sussing me out to see what I knew about the cure, finding out how much of an obstacle I was going to be to her getting it, figuring out how pissed off I might be with her over her antics at my convention, and holding out hope deep down that maybe I’d be her friend too. She’d change her mind on that last one if I got my way on this Silas/cure situation, but it would be worse if she thought the cure was within her grasp when it was ripped away from her. That’s when she’d become a sore loser probably in need of daggering, but hopefully, nobody got that close to the cure, so it wouldn’t come to that.

I’d get rid of the tombstone tonight. I was pretty sure that it was still in the cabin, so I’d toss it in the middle of the lake when we got there, and that would just leave Kol to get rid of the sword. Without either of those, nobody would be going near Silas, and Rebekah and I could keep this a friendly competition. It was with that in mind that I divulged the highlights of how I’d activated my curse and how Bonnie had gotten rid of some of it, so now it wasn’t fatal the way it’d been when it was activated, but it was unstable in a way it hadn’t been before all of that happened. My strategy seemed to have worked. When I was done, she sat back while she absorbed what I’d said, and asked, “Expression?” 

She wasn’t asking because she was worried about Bonnie using it or what that might mean for her if she got in Bonnie’s way. There was almost a sympathetic look in her eyes. I’d barely brushed over that, merely a mention on how I hadn’t wanted a witch using Expression but got one anyway as I explained how the corpse had been brought back long enough for me to kill it again. I hadn’t told her that the part of the curse I’d lost was now buried in the ground, because who knew if she’d dig it up and try to use it in some way. I’d just gone on to discuss killing the vampires and how I’d known something was off with her when Klaus was in control. She’d given me a similar look to the one he’d given me that night when he was wearing her face. Guess it meant something to her that I’d known her well enough to know she wasn’t herself. That’s probably why she landed on feeling some kind of sympathy over the Expression, almost like a sentimental transaction of sorts. “Mmhm.”

She was smart enough not to dwell on it any longer than that given my guarded response, but she obviously knew more or less as much as Alice did about magic, so she knew it must’ve been bad. I think there was also a part of her starting to realize how serious I was about doing whatever it took to keep Silas where he was given what I’d been willing to do to the professor, but she wasn’t ready to eliminate me just yet. I guess that meant that she wasn’t entirely an enemy, but she wasn’t exactly an ally either. That’s what I’d been aiming for when she sat down, so that was fine with me.


	50. A Moment of Respite

Climbing the steps to the deck at the lake house, I readjusted the wireless headset that I’d gotten yesterday. I never listened to music while out on a run. There’s no way I’d leave myself open to attack like that, but I figured this should be okay, because my hands stayed free if I needed to fight, and I could still hear out of one ear if anything were to approach me from the back or sides. Besides, it’s not like I had it on the whole time, just when my daily morning wake-up call came through. 

Caroline had decided she wanted to stay in touch more often after I left this time. She'd framed as a daily meeting to discuss what had happened during the day and what we’d do about whatever it was going forward. I wasn’t against it, so I’d agreed pretty easily. I just hadn’t known that my neurotic best friend would think that first thing in the morning would be the best time to catch up. Didn’t seem to matter whether I was awake or not, and it also didn’t appear to matter if nothing had happened. I think she was feeling a little overwhelmed with all the messes going on around her and a lot left out since there was still tension there between she, Elena, and Bonnie. I could relate, so I’d decided that since she was making the most of her mornings by starting early, I wouldn’t complain about it. I’d just switch my daily jog from night to before the sun came out, and with me out of the house, it gave us more privacy. 

With a sigh, I flopped down onto one of the wooden deck chairs. “Yeah, no, I get it, Caroline. I do. I felt the same way after my parents died. Klaus was my number one target, so I understand why Tyler feels that way now. You just need to do what Damon did for me and reign him in until he can do it himself.”

_”I know, but how do I do that? He’s starting to obsess.”_

“Take him out for some fun, somewhere outside of Mystic Falls.”

_”Get him to sublimate.”_

“Yep. Go play some vampire games.”

I could almost hear her thoughts whirling with plans in the seconds that followed. Finally, she said, _“I think I might have an idea. I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow.”_

“If it goes well, you’ll probably have to do it again tomorrow, and the next day and switch it up with something else after that. It’s a moment by moment and then day by day kind of thing until it fades, but it’ll probably take longer for him. He runs more on emotion than I do because – “

“ _of what he is._ ”

“Yeah.” She sighed heavily. She’d just been feeling a little better, and then I'd brought her crashing back to reality, but I didn’t want her to get her hopes up if it didn’t work straight away. I wasn’t sure when it happened for me, but it was at least the entire summer and then probably talking to my Mom that had done it. Talking to his Mom wasn’t something Tyler would ever be able to do, so I wasn’t sure how long it’d take him to not want revenge, but if he tried to exact it, especially when Klaus was still sore over what they’d tried to do to him, then Klaus was going to kill him. That was her big worry and mine. Didn’t mean I couldn’t try to lighten her mood again though. “Just get him through the next few weeks, and then you’ll have all the time in the world to help him work on it.”

 _”I guess.”_ She sounded less than certain. _”When are you coming back?”_

“When Jeremy stops sucking. He’s fast and strong, but he has no idea what he’s doing, and why should he? He’s never done anything like this. If that mark of his was smart, it would’ve just broken its male only policy and jumped onto me.”

 _”Oh god, that’s a terrifying thought.”_ I exhaled a laugh, and she quickly said, _“No, I’m serious. I don’t even want to imagine . . . I just did, and yeah, it’s terrifying. I’m saying it now. ‘No,’ to super vampire hunter Eve. If you even think of finding a way to - ”_

“Trust me. One curse is enough. I’m not looking to add another one to it.”

_”Hmm . . . “_

I could hear her drumming her fingers on a hard surface and laughed again. “I promise, okay? I don’t want any part of that. I’m just saying it’d be easier if I could do it myself.” 

_”Yeah . . . You know, now that you mention it, I can’t see you just standing back and letting him do much of anything on his own.”_

Nope. How else was I going to keep him from making that mark grow if I didn’t kill and / or release every vampire he came across before he could do anything about it. “We’ll see.”

_”Eve.”_

“Yes, Caroline?”

_”You’re not going to let him kill any vampires, are you?”_

“Not until that sword is found. Think about how many monsters have died in and around Mystic Falls in the last year alone. Add all the other monsters that have ever died. There is nothing worth allowing all of them them to come back.”

_”What about Elena?”_

“She knows where I stand on it.”

_”Yeah, but I don’t think she realizes that you won’t eventually cave on it for anyone, including her . . . or Klaus.”_

“Then that’s on her.”

_”And Klaus?”_

“Right now, we’re treating it as a game. We’ll figure it out when we get to the end.”

_”Just be careful.”_

“Always.”

_”Yeah, well what you think is careful would be suicidal for anyone else. Be careful by a normal person’s standards.”_

“That’s a good way to wind up dead, but I appreciate the sentiment. Good luck on your mission. I’ll let you know how mine’s going tomorrow.”

We said our goodbyes and then I pushed myself out of my seat to make my way into the lake house. I kept the lights off until I got to the kitchen and went straight to one of the lower cabinets to get a large glass bowl. I’d barely put it on the counter when I felt a slight breeze at my back, and a hand slid over mine on the bowl. Ducking down to just behind my ear, Damon whispered, “I think it’s time to learn something else, Evie. If you make the troops eat waffles again, I think we’re going to have a mutiny on our hands.”

I quickly looked back at him over my shoulder. “What’s wrong with the waffles?” 

I’d researched high protein / low carb recipes before we got here. They looked right, and I thought they tasted fine. “Nothing. People just like variety.”

It’d only been a few days. “Yeah, but blood, is blood, is blood, and you don’t seem to mind having had it every day for almost 150 years.”

Attempting not to laugh, he tried again. “I’ll have you know there are subtle differences in blood from one person to the next, and they’re humans, Eve, not vampires.“

“They were complaining about it?” He pulled a face, like he didn’t want to admit it despite having brought it up, but yeah, and I grumbled, “Well, then maybe they shouldn’t have eaten so many of them, and they wouldn’t have gotten sick of them so fast.” 

His eyebrow arched. “Are waffles really the hill you want to die on?”

Right. Pick my battles. I’d have enough of those with all the whining and complaining I was sure to get throughout the day. “Fine. Then they can have freaking cereal, and we’ll see how long they can keep their energy levels up.” 

_I’ll just make them run to the store in town to buy it._ His chest pressed against my back as his arms wound around my waist. “You could push them harder than you have already to prove a point.” _How did he know that’s what I was thinking?_ I quickly tilted my head to look up at him, and he smirked, “Or I could teach you how to make omelettes.”

Leaning back against him, I relaxed. This was nice, just he and I, before the alarms in the rest of the house started to go off. Most of our moments of respite were hidden behind the door to my room at the boarding house or the door here, times when we could just be, and they were great, but being able to have one of those moments in the outside world made it feel different. It was like a glimpse of what a normal life away from Mystic Falls could be if we ever managed to find the right time to go. It was peaceful. I certainly felt content anyway. “We haven’t had cooking lessons in a while.”

He gave me one of his more roguish grins. “There’s a lot of things we haven’t done in a while.” 

In case I hadn’t gotten the point he was making, he dipped down to capture my lips with his, and I couldn’t help but breathe out a laugh as my hand reached behind his head to hold him in place. Despite the change in my curse, this was still sure to warm my external body temperature to a normal range. We just had to start slow. Wouldn’t want us to freeze together. Pretty sure that’d be a mood killer.

What wasn’t a mood killer, apparently, was how being touched by me felt to him in the minutes before I was restored to a normal body temperature, and it didn't seem to matter whether it was my tongue that felt like I'd just had an ice cube or my finger tips touching him pretty much anywhere. It wasn't just that he found it arousing either. I think he liked how it felt to experience a sensation he hadn’t had since he was human. Vampirism might be like a virus that made a person evolve into something else, but it was a magical virus, one made of dark magic, so there was probably some connection he and every other vampire could feel to my curse made of an even darker magic, but with him, that ability to feel cold ultimately made him feel more alive. Until I got rid of the curse, I mostly thought of that as my gift to him, and he hadn't gotten tired of receiving it yet.

Turning in his arms to face him, I brought my hands to his shoulders and deepened the kiss. He hummed in appreciation and let his hands roam until they’d found a place to nestle against my backside. A little squeeze, and he pulled me tight against him with a soft growl. I silently snorted in amusement before pulling back just enough to murmur, “Well, I know you can’t be talking about this, because just last night – “

His lips reclaimed mine, and a moment, a minute, who knew how long later, he released a soft sigh before dozily saying, “Last night was too long ago. I’d keep you in bed all day, every day if I could,” as he moved to my neck. 

Thankful for the air, I melted against him and knew I needed to put a stop to this soon, but that’s so not what I wanted to do. Still, I didn’t want an audience, and I had other, less fun things to do today. It’d make it better when we were able to find time to be together if we had to wait anyway. “Thought you said people need variety. All day, every day, doesn’t seem too diverse.” 

Remembering why he came in here, he briefly paused before looking down at me, and I smirked. Picking me up to set me on the counter, he retorted, “Oh, I have that covered in ways you haven’t even begun think of yet,” as he rested his forehead against mine to catch his breath.

“Yeah?” He slowly nodded at my gentle mocking. “Every second of the day, huh?”

He chuckled saying, “Don’t tempt me,” before sliding his hands up my thighs. Leaning back to look at me, he almost looked like it pained him to say, “Shouldn’t have said I’d teach you how to make omelettes, huh?” I shook my head, and he took a steadying breath before diving in for one more quick kiss. Okay it wasn’t that quick, but before we both got swept up in it too much, he groaned in frustration and pulled back again. Whatever he saw on my face made him relax before he gave me a boyish grin free of the stress amassed over 165 difficult years and completely human in nature. He looked genuinely happy and peaceful. “To be continued.” 

I watched him turn away from me to find what he needed and nodded even though he couldn’t see it. I’d just been well and truly dazzled by him, I think. There’s no other reason I can think of for why the next words out of my mouth were, ”I’m lucky, you know.” He glanced at me over his shoulder, and I shrugged before saying, “That you’re mine.” It was out of nowhere, and it really wasn’t like me to sound like a Valentine’s Day card, so it took him a second to process. After he did though, breakfast was going to be late today.

An hour later, we were still in our room tangled up in one another. Bodies glistening, slick with sweat, he’d spent the entire time worshiping me. There’s no other way to describe the silent reverence every touch, every look conveyed, and I 100% did not think I deserved that. He should’ve been loved by someone who knew him, the good and bad, and who he wanted, a long time ago, so that’s what I’d tried to let him know in our almost entirely wordless exchange. It was powerful and took this thing between us beyond a level I hadn’t thought could be exceeded, but we were nearing the end. 

I was in his lap with my legs around his waist and almost painfully close. He brushed my damp hair behind my ear before giving me the flicker of a smile and flipped me under him. It allowed him to adjust his angle, and in two thrusts it was, ’hello ecstasy, my name is Eve.’ As I basked in every delicious sensation, I missed what he was murmuring as his head dropped next to mine. He waited for his release until after he was sure that he’d helped me ride out the waves, and then collapsed on top of me.

 _Wow. That was . . . Wait, what’d he say?_ It was something about never letting me go, I think. Why the hell would he say that? Hm. He was thinking about our immortality difference again, wasn’t he? I waited all of 10 seconds before ruining our bliss. “You’re not gonna go crazy now, are you?”

I felt him chuckle from where he was before he lazily lifted his head to look down at me. “Probably about the same as normal.”

Reaching up to run my fingers through his hair, I shrugged. “Oh, well, then I guess I can live with that.”

“I’m serious.” My eyes flicked to his, and he said, “It’s like that every time for me.” 

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. You have not worshiped at the altar of Eve every time we’ve had sex.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. This is just the first time I’ve let you know I do.” With a smirk he added, “I’ve been waiting on you to catch up.” His smirk slowly fell into a look of confusion. “Pretty much the entire time that I’ve known you now that I think about it.”

Before I could respond, there was a knock on the door. “Hey, Eve, you busy?” 

It didn’t look like Damon was planning on moving from his spot, but I still said, “What do you need, Matt?”

Elena had wanted someone here to keep an eye on things, and she seemed to think that Matt would keep me from beating the ever loving crap out of Jeremy, but he was mostly using this as a holiday. “Uh, Jer and I were wondering if you were going to make breakfast.” 

My eyebrows arched as I looked back up at Damon. “Well, would you look at that? Make them wait, and they will eat whatever you give them.”

Exhaling a laugh, Damon looked at the door. “Omelettes or waffles, Matt?”

“Uh, omelettes, I guess.” 

As I scowled, Damon gave me a victorious grin and said, “Yeah, all right. We’ll be out after a shower.” Shower? At my intrigued expression, Damon grinned, “Oh, yeah . . . come on.” Getting off of me, he grabbed my hand and pulled me close, so he could pick me up and carry me into the _en suite_. I may or may not have been giggling the entire way.


	51. Lessons on Being a Hunter

Pulling up a chair at the table, Alice looked around before her face fell into a disappointed frown. “Where are the waffles?”

I laughed before glancing back at Damon. “Apparently, there’s been some controversy over them, so we’re having omelettes today.”

“Oh, but they’re so good. How can anyone find them controversial? There’s not too much sweetness with the berries, and the vanilla/almond ratio is divine. Oh and I really love the – “

Maybe I could make it up to her. “You wanna try a smoothie?”

Damon added, “They’re actually not bad.” 

Alice gave a reluctant nod. “Yes, please, that’d be lovely.” Taking in the room, she asked, “Where are the boys?”

Getting the ingredients I needed, I answered, “Out for a run around the lake.” 

“Isn’t it a little late?”

It was the first thing they did after a quick warm up. “We, uh . . . we had a bit of a late start today.”

Leaning forward conspiratorially, Damon whispered, “We were having . . . S.E.X.”

I whipped around to look at him, but immediately had an explanation for why he’d said that. Even him just spelling it out was too much for Alice. She was horrified. “Why on nature’s green earth would you think I should know that?! If she wants to talk to me about it, then by all means, I hope she does, but you – you can’t just say something like that. It’s a very ungentlemanly thing to do.”

“Ah, well, he’s not a gentleman, Alice. He’s a rogue.”

“Well, I would say so - having conversations like that over the breakfast table. I sincerely hope - ”

I was trying so hard not to laugh, because I didn't want to hurt her feelings by laughing at her, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer and quickly turned away from them to push the button on the blender. When I was sure I had it under control, I flicked it off, and Alice must have been waiting for it, because she immediately said, “I am not your bro, Damon Salvatore.”

At that, I had to turn the blender on again. Bro? I take it Jeremy had been trying to teach her more modern terminology. I flicked it off when I was sure I wouldn’t crack up again, and she rushed out, “You can’t just – “

“Well, maybe if you weren’t such a prude, we could get out of here for a drink and – “

“Prude?! I’ll have you know I’m no such thing. I’ve been around a long time. I could tell you hundreds of stories.“

“Great. Then let’s do it. We’ll go out tonight, get drunk, and you can tell me some of those ‘stories.’”

Her bluster immediately crashed. “Well, I would, but . . . but Eve’s going to need help with her night time training.” 

Wow. He really made her uneasy, but I think she was missing something. Sure, he was poking fun and offending her, but that was his way of extending an offer of friendship. She must have impressed him when they were trying to take down Klaus or with the way she’d thrown Kol to the Tyler-wolf. Might’ve been both, but it didn’t really matter. His offering to give being friends a shot was not a small thing for him, and her excuse was just that, an excuse. She went off for walks in the woods or to plant flowers or researched 1960 Volkswagen Beetles during the day. Then she did help me with training at night, and I liked having her there, but I really didn’t need her help any more than Damon needed it during the day. Bringing her the smoothie, I set it down on the table saying, “If you want to go, I’m good, Alice.” She shot me a surprised look that said I was a traitor, and I turned away from her to get her omelette that was heating in the oven. “You need friends. He’s offering. Go. Have fun.”

When I came back with her plate, she was sipping on her smoothie without taking her eyes off of Damon, like he was a snake about to strike, but then her attention turned to what she was drinking. Looking down at it in wonder, she murmured, “This is amazing.”

“Thanks.” Pulling the chair next to her out and turning it around to sit with my arms on the back, I watched her cut her omelette and said, “So, what do you say?” 

Her eyes flicked from me to Damon, and she went back to cutting her food. “Fine, but I don’t want to hear anything else about you from him. It’s the height of rudeness.”

“And really you just want to hear all the gossip from me.”

“Oh yes, please. That would fun. With all the testosterone around here, I could do with some girl bonding. Maybe tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

Damon objected to that. “Wait, who’s gonna be there to defend my honor if you two are talking about me?”

She quickly shot back, “You have no honor,” and it made the corner of his mouth twitch up into a brief smile that was a little more than a smirk. He was thinking this might actually be fun for him, and I thought it probably would be too. He’d find ways to make her feel freer to be a little more wild, which would be good for her, and she’d find ways to tone him down. Perfect friendship in the making as far as I was concerned. 

What wasn’t perfect was having to stay indoors during the day while Damon trained Jeremy. I got Jeremy at night but by then he was already pretty tired, and during the day, I got to tutor Matt. No official homework right now, because we were on a winter break, but I’d gotten the reading lists that were going to be handed out at the start of the new semester from our respective English teachers. We were being given a choice of one out of about 50 classics that we had to report back on to the rest of the class. It’d be worth about 25% of our overall grade. 

His class was a bit more remedial, so I’d asked his teacher if he’d get extra credit or something if I tutored him on reading a book that was a little more difficult. I got an emphatic ‘yes’ back, and it was obvious why. Matt had barely passed most of his classes from the first semester, which is why I’d offered to help him again. If he was going to graduate, he was going to need all the help he could get, and it wasn’t going to take that much effort on my part for this particular assignment. All I had to do was get him to read something I’d already read. That way I could quiz him and still read a book I hadn’t read yet.

“Oh, man . . . Why would he do that?” 

I looked up from the _The Tin Drum_ to see what he was upset about. He was reading _Invisible Man_ , so it could be any number of things. “Why would who do what?”

“This Dr. Bledsoe guy is a dick. Like, he already ruined the guy’s life by kicking him out of college, and then he goes and sends him around with all these supposed recommendations that are really just letters saying not to give the guy a chance.”

“Well, what does Dr. Bledsoe’s character represent?”

“Dickheads everywhere?”

I rolled my eyes. “You can do better than that. How has he gotten where he is?”

Matt’s eyes narrowed, while he thought about it, and then I got a shrug. “He’s a suck up to guy’s like that Mr. Norton.”

“Yeah, he’s subservient to rich white people. That’s given him a level of power that he is willing to do anything to keep. The narrator is starting out from a lower tier of society, and he became a problem for him, so he got rid of him, but he also made sure he couldn’t come back to make any more problems for him. What do you think Ellison is trying to say?”

Sounding confused, he tried, “Stop shitting all over the people you should be helping. I mean that’s the whole idea of going to college, isn’t it? To improve your place in the world, and what he does is . . . I don’t know. It just sucks.”

He had a general idea of what he wanted to say. “Read what Ellison had to say about Dr. Bledsoe. It’ll make it clearer.”

“Where would I even find that?”

“Uh, you could go get the book _Shadow and Act_ , a collection of essays by him from a library, or you could just look it up on line. If you have an additional source like that in your presentation, then it’ll stand out in comparison to the other kids in your class and make your case stronger overall . . . That is if what interests you is dissecting the Dr. Bledsoe character. But you still have a lot left to read, so you might find something else that strikes a chord with you between now and the end of the book.”

Slumping, like I’d asked him to do a marathon, he shook his head. “We’re supposed to be on winter break. Why are we doing homework?”

“Because you have the time to do it now, and you might not have it when school comes back since Mystic Falls is one calamity after another.”

Lifting the book, he considered it, before closing it as he said, “You know we’ve been at this for days, and I need a break. I’m done for the day.”

We’d had an agreement. If he didn’t study, then I was going to put him through worse training than Jeremy was doing right now. “You calling my bluff, Matthew?”

Letting his arm fall over the arm of the chair in defeat, he muttered, “Yeah, I guess,” and I smiled. 

“Excellent. Let’s start with chin ups.”

“What?”

Putting my book down, I stood and pointed at one of the cross beams above us. “Start with 10. I need to see how you do before I alter your plan accordingly.”

Getting up with a grin, he moved to stand next to me. “You’ve been waiting for this.”

“Absolutely.”

“Is training with your guy and then us not enough?”

I had no idea how much Klaus was paying my instructor or if my instructor was simply compelled to train me no matter what, but he didn’t seem to mind making the trip out here every night for my lessons. I had a long way to go, but I felt like I was starting to turn a corner, so my training with him had been a lot better as of late. The problem was that it was still only an hour of any real physical activity for me. 

Matt’s training at night was more like target practice in low visibility conditions, and very, very light self-defense, like how to break various holds a vampire or even a normal human might use on him. Jeremy’s nightly training was mostly me putting him in difficult positions that he had to find a way out of himself to help him learn how to think faster on his feet, chemistry to teach him how to make explosives or create potent vervain and wolfbane concoctions, hitting a moving target, which he was having some trouble doing day or night, and learning hand-to-hand, because I wouldn’t let him learn that with vampires until he’d worked up to it. The truth is that it was all very tedious for me, and Matt definitely had the better deal out of the two even if this was supposed to be his winter holiday. “In fairness, you’ve been training your mind during the day and had very moderate training at night for self-defense. You have it easy.”

“You call this easy?”

I quickly flicked a look at him before saying, “Trust me. You have no idea what difficult training really is . . . Okay. Now. 10 chin ups.”

Looking up at the beam above us again, he shook his head. “How am I even supposed to get up there?”

“You’re kidding, right? It’s not that high - nowhere near as high as some of the ones at the Boarding House.”

“Wait, are you saying – “ Taking off from my spot, I ran at the nearest vertical support beam, kicked off of it and propelled myself up to the horizontal crossbeam. I looked down at him with a smirk and then counted out 10 quick chin ups. When I was done, I dropped down next to him and grinned. “Show off.”

“Hey, you wanna be able to climb over a fence, onto a roof, or up a tree to hide? Then you’d better be able to do what I just did, and I’m sure you’ll be able to do it a lot faster than I can with practice.” Understanding the reasoning behind why he might need to know this seemed to be all the motivation he needed. Looking between the support beam and the cross beam a couple of times, he nodded before giving it a try, but didn’t quite catch the cross beam. He toppled back down, and I said, “You can’t have any fear of falling, or you’ll fall. Try again.”

He got it on about the 5th try, and once he was up there, he was able to do the chin ups okay, so I decided to work more on getting up him there. The next drill was to run at the support beam, push off of it with a foot, grab the crossbeam, pull yourself up and over it before dangling over the other side and dropping back down. We did that 10 times, then went on to standard push ups. He was the show off with those, which he was more than happy to exhibit when he finished first by a couple of seconds. Then it was a circuit up the stairs, back down, run at the support beam, pull yourself up, climb over, drop down, do push ups, and start over again. You never know when you’re going to need to push yourself up off the ground like that, run, possibly up several flights of stairs, and then climb something to get at a monster you’re chasing or get away from a monster that’s chasing you.

By the time we’d done that ten times, it was time for lunch, and after that, he wanted me to go over some of the moves he'd learned the night before in self-defense training. Usually, I told him what to do and had Alice train with him, but as long as I wore my leather gloves to keep from touching him in the event my curse decided to change the rules again, it should be okay. It was totally against my sister’s rule of no fighting in the house, but we moved everything that we could out of the way, and he said he wouldn’t tell her if I didn’t. We were getting close to dinnertime, and Matt was looking more confident, less awkward in his movements. There’d been a noticeable improvement. Without Jeremy around to watch, he seemed to really want to take this seriously, like he was working hard not to be the weakest link, especially now that Elena’s kid brother had been supernaturally enhanced. 

“Hey, you know that drill we did this morning? Do you think I could do something like that when we get back home?”

“Do you have any trees in your back yard that’d have a branch that’s just out of reach? Or maybe just use the roof of your house. There’s a good incline to it, so it’d be a good substitute for the stairs. Run across the top and go back down the opposite side, run around to the front do some push ups, and then start again – something like that?”

He nodded, like he didn’t think that was the worst idea, and right around the time I was thinking that I might have a person willing to join my parkour club, there were two shots fired in quick succession outside. That wasn’t unusual in and of itself. Jeremy mostly did target practice with Damon all day, and that didn't just include target practice with a crossbow, but it’d been awfully close to the house, and they’d been practicing further away earlier, so I went to the window to investigate and saw the back of Klaus, Damon standing opposite him with a gun dangling from his hand, and Jeremy staring daggers at Klaus from off to the side. Before I could even roll my eyes, Klaus was gone in a flash, probably didn’t want to give Damon the satisfaction of pulling the bullets out in front of him.

Opening the window, I threw out, “He’ll be back. You know that, right?”

“I did it for Carol.”

“You told him that?” Damon nodded, and I relaxed. There was something kind of pure about the way supernatural people communicated with one another sometimes. Klaus killed Carol. Damon shot him to let him know it was a dick move. Klaus left to not show any weakness in front of him, and as soon as those bullets had been plucked out, he’d get over being shot. Lies and deceit were where real problems originated, but Damon had been honest about where he stood on the issue, and Klaus would respect him for that. He’d drop it and move on to why he’d really been here by the time he did come back. “Good . . . He was here to let us know that he knows where we are?” Intimidation 101. Make your target believe that there is no escape. In this case, it meant letting us know that no matter where we went, Klaus would find us.

“Well, he wanted to know why Jeremy hadn’t killed any more vampires, but as far as underlying messages go? Sure. Why not?”

He sounded a bit salty, and I didn’t think it was just because Klaus had been here. Damon was here to help train Jeremy, so Jeremy could get up to par faster, and it’d be one more thing ticked off the to-do list that had to be completed before we left. That didn’t mean he was cutting corners or not doing a good job training Jeremy, because I would not be okay with that, but it did mean that he was getting frustrated that Jeremy wasn’t picking this up as fast as he wanted, and I knew Jeremy was throwing all kinds of unwarranted attitude his way, which didn’t help the situation. I flicked a look at Jeremy and said, “Show Damon some respect. He’s trying to help you stay alive.”

“What?! I didn’t even do anything.”

“He went out there in a good mood this morning, and it was almost entirely gone by lunch. That was well before Klaus showed up. Stop giving him attitude because you can’t listen to even simple instructions.”

Jeremy’s mouth dropped open, and he looked to Damon for support, but there was no support there to be had, just a smirk as Damon said, “You are so gonna be begging to get me back after she’s done with you.”

“Yep. Looks like you finally get to see why I say he’s the nice one.”

“Hey!” Damon looked thoroughly insulted by that. “I wouldn’t go that far.” Looking in the direction that Klaus had gone, he asked, “What are we going to do about that? You’re right. He will definitely be back.”

“Well did you shoot first or tell him why Jeremy hadn’t killed any more vampires?”

“I told him if he wants that tattoo completed, Jeremy needs to be alive to do it, and he’s nowhere near ready.”

Yeah, the plan was to get Jeremy up to a certain standard and then take him on a few hunts to give him real world experience. I may do everything I could to keep him from killing any vampires between now and when Kol found that sword, but as soon as that sword was gone, it wouldn't matter if Jeremy completed the tattoo, and he'd definitely want to keep hunting since he was a supernatural hunter now, so I still wanted him to be fully trained at the end of this. I’d have to make sure he was ready to fly under the radar too, and then it’d probably be best if he left using that escape plan of his. I hadn’t said that to Elena, but he couldn’t sit around waiting for her to go with him anymore. I’d given up on any hope that she would if I was being honest, and leaving was the safest option for him. It wasn’t just that his tattoo made him a target. Him being a hunter was enough to make him one too.

I could live in one place, but Jeremy wasn’t me. My mistakes tended to be of the killing everyone whether they deserved it or not variety. Until he became way more experienced, his mistakes would be more along the lines of missing his target or accidentally letting vampires that would want revenge on him slip away, so unless he planned on living with his vampire sister his entire life for protection while he slept, then living in one place instead of staying on the move would make finding him a lot easier, and over time, when enough vampires knew who he was, they wouldn’t even need to have any personal grievances with him to want to find him, just the desire for a challenge. He’d have them showing up all the time if they knew his home address. Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where Klaus had gone - to round up some vampires to send to Jeremy’s current location - despite probably believing Damon about Jeremy not being ready for it. 

He wasn’t entirely unreasonable. He knew Jeremy hadn’t had anywhere close to the amount of training he’d need to tackle enough vampires to grow that tattoo in any meaningful way, and if a vampire that was 150 years old was too difficult, then the obvious option was to go younger. Jeremy certainly hadn’t had any problems with that vampire that Stefan had created just for Jeremy to kill. Yeah. That was definitely Klaus’s next move.

Looking at Jeremy, I said, “Start taping my vervain blow darts to the tips of all your stakes. They’re thinner and will be easier to hide . . . and switch out your arrows to the vervain ones too.”

“What? Why?”

“Because if he’s out there right now creating a bunch of baby vamps, then I think it’s probably wrong for our first move to be killing them before they’ve done anything wrong. I’m not entirely sure they won’t be compelled to keep attacking you or Matt until you do kill them, and if that’s the case, then Damon and I may have to kill them, but if we get there before Klaus thinks of doing that and you make him believe you’re going to do what he wants without an argument, then it won’t come to that. You need to start preparing to put them down in a way that makes it look like you’re killing them. He won’t look too closely to see if they’re going grey and veiny in the dark, and it’s dusk now. The optics of them going down and staying down because of the vervain and you telling him what the tattoo looks like up to about half the point that Connor had it should be enough to keep him happy in the short term, but you’re obviously gonna have to just miss their hearts.”

Stepping closer to the window as he pointed in the direction of the town, Jeremy quickly said, “Wait, so are you saying that he’s out there right now killing people, just so I – “

With a knowing nod, Damon said, “It’s what I’d do.”

“Why aren’t we out there trying to stop him?”

Damon and I shared a look. There’s nothing we could do to stop him. Klaus was too fast. I’d seen how fast he was when he tried turning that werewolf pack in Appalachia, and even the small town near here had too many people in it for us to protect them all unless they were all in one place. To do that, we’d still have to go from door to door and have Damon or Alice compel them to the same building where we could set up a perimeter and protect them, but that took time, and Klaus was more than likely already there setting his plan in motion. “At this point, it’s really more about doing damage control. It’s a lesson that’s adjacent to learning that you sometimes have to let bad things happen to prevent worse things from happening. Neither are easy truths to accept, but they’re both central to being a hunter.”


	52. I Only Speak the Truth

It'd just gotten dark when we walked into the bar in town. It was still the off-season, so there hadn’t been any more people here than the last time Damon and I were here, but there’d certainly been more life then. The main bit of life left in here now was the smug Viking sitting at the bar. “You found me without me needing to make another house call, Little Ghost. I suppose it’s a good thing you did, or I would’ve had to turn your instructor to draw you out, and it would’ve been incredibly tedious to find you a new one with the same kind of reputation.”

Looking around in disgust at the 20 or so bodies lying around the room, Alice murmured, “What have you done?” and Klaus turned his attention to her.

“What needed to be done. If my hunter isn’t up for the fight, I – “

“He is not your hunter. He’s a teenage boy.“

Knowing how he was going to respond to that, I barely had enough time to stick my arm out to separate them as Klaus flashed in front of her. “What he is, Adalhaidis – “

“It’s Alice now.”

I guess what Kol had called her was her given name. “Klaus, do you really want to waste your energy on posturing, or do you have bigger plans at play here?”

Dragging his attention away from her, Klaus flicked a look down at me before taking a step back as he said, “I take it she has you to thank for her new found bravado.”

“I wouldn’t call it bravado, because it’s not an act, and I so want to see her throw someone into a tornado, but like I said, we have other things to deal with right now. These people have obviously completed the first two steps in becoming a vampire. How much time do we have before they wake up and finish transitioning so we can get this show on the road?”

Settling back against the nearest bar stool, he watched me. “Whatever you’re planning, it won’t work.”

Stepping forward, Jeremy said, “You don’t have to strong-arm me into anything. If you want these vampires dead, I’ll do it. Just stop being a dick about it.”

Looking from Jeremy to me, back to Jeremy, and then me again, Klaus smirked. “That’s quite the ventriloquist act you have there, but if you expect me to believe that you intend to let him kill even one of these vampires in the making – “

I felt a presence come up behind me at a diagonal from somewhere in the corner behind Damon. There’d been a woman over there the entire time just kind of standing in a daze. If I’d consciously noticed her at all, it’d been to think that she was a human he’d left to feed the others when they started to wake up, but she was silent. Softer of foot than a normal human would be. Swiveling at the waist, the palm of my hand shot forward, and I cracked her right in the nose. Blood started gushing out of it, and she reached up to grab it with her free hand, tears in her eyes. With her other hand, she still tried to stab me with what looked like a syringe, but I blocked her arm and shoved her away from me. She was still bleeding, so she was human. She must’ve been compelled not to make a sound. 

She lunged at me again, and Damon’s hand flew to her forehead to hold her back. Now she was just swinging wildly in my direction, like a demented windmill that wasn’t going anywhere, and Damon looked at Klaus over his shoulder with an annoyed, “Seriously?” 

I heard the scrape of a shoe over my left shoulder and again from behind Damon’s back now that he’d turned. Dipping down, I reaching over my head to grab the wrist I knew was heading my way, and using the person’s momentum against them, I kept the needle away from me and tugged down on the wrist as I stood to flip whoever it was over onto their back. Matt and Jeremy descended on him, and I quickly said, “He’s human! They’re just compelled not to make any - ” 

I cut myself off as I stepped forward to get away from a new presence at my back, but I wasn’t fast enough and felt a slight skin prick at my side. I murmured, “Goddamn it,” before I started to feel woozy and began to crumple, but I was caught before I could fall too far, and heard Klaus from right behind me muse, “You’re getting better at preparing for it with humans,” before directing what he had to say to the others. “I expect that tattoo to being well on its way to being completed. You can have her back when it is.”

I garbled out, “Stick to the plan,” as a reminder that Jeremy's tattoo didn’t actually have to have any more added to it tonight if they used what they knew of Connor’s tattoo instead. Hopefully, one of them got my message, or Damon was going to go all ‘kill, kill, kill,’ with Jeremy on the vampires if it was the only way to get me back from Klaus. Oh, who was I kidding? He was definitely going to do that, wasn’t he? 

It was a good minute before I could really register that I was no longer in the bar and instead found myself in a vehicle. I drowsily looked over my shoulder, and yeah, it would appear that Klaus was my driver. “I’m still awake?”

“You were given enough. No need to overdo it.”

Mm. He might wish he’d given me more. I felt around in my pocket for my phone, found the number I was fairly certain belonged to Kol, and started to slowly and discreetly text what I hoped was a coherent enough message. It meant all those baby vampires would be dying, but at least it wouldn’t be by Jeremy’s hand. 

I felt a scrap of paper in my pocket with my phone and quickly said, “Oh, I almost forgot. Here.” 

Uncrumpling it after taking it from me, Klaus’s eyes scanned it before he put it into his pocket. “I’ll see to it the first chance I get.”

Excellent. The little girl from the summer’s future should be headed back to her soon enough. “So . . . you doin’ anything for Christmas?”

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and exhaled a laugh. “I don’t think your friends would like it much if you invited me . . . if that is, in fact, what you were just attempting to do.”

Maybe, but if it made him want to kill everyone a little less for what they did to him, then it couldn’t hurt to try. “If you can avoid Tyler, then I think it should be fine.” A look of confusion swept his face, and he picked up a vial of something from the center console to study it. He was making sure he’d given me the right thing, wasn’t he? Old bottle. Certainly not the type to be sold in a pharmacy. Didn’t happen to contain some kind of witchy truth serum, did it? The concept made me smirk. I always fucked with people when it came to the truth as I saw it. Using that stuff on me wouldn’t change that . . . just maybe make me a little more talkative. “Caroline’s putting it together.”

Putting the vial into his pocket, he shot me a look. “Shouldn’t your friend have a say before you go dangling her in front of me?”

“I don’t think she’ll mind.” His attention came back to me, and I smirked again before looking out the front window. If Caroline thought she could use it to buy some leeway with Klaus when it came to Tyler, she’d be up for it. “You could bring Rebekah. She really knows how to kick off a great party.”

“What are you playing at?”

I drunkenly answered, “I doubt it’s a game you’ve ever played unless you were being quite literal with it . . . It’s called ‘Burying the Hatchet.’”

I pushed send on my text and was quite pleased with myself for about half a minute. That’s when Klaus looked down at his phone and smirked. “Tattoo. Durham Lake Bar. Baby Vampires. Go kill. Have fun.” 

“Hey!”

He chuckled before sticking his phone back in his pocket. “I get the impression that wasn’t meant for me.”

“Stupid names both starting with ‘K’”

His eyebrows arched as he looked at me again. “Who else do you know – “ His eyes narrowed. “Kol?” He held his hand out, palm up, and my face fell into something of a pout. “Before I decide to take it by force.” I slapped my phone into his hand, and he turned his attention back to the road as he pocketed it. “You can’t rely on my brother for anything, except trouble.”

“Oh, I fully expect him to do something dastardly.” The corners of Klaus’s mouth turned up, possibly at the difficulty I was having enunciating much of anything, and I added, “He just won’t kill me . . . at least not yet, probably not at all . . . mete out some kind of punishment sure, but death? Not unless he’s bored and remembers it’s something he could do to fill the time, but by then he’ll probably be off somewhere else anyway.” 

“And why would my brother have reason to punish you?”

I slurred, “I was a terrible hostess,” he chuckled again.

“Does it have anything to do with you having him tied up?”

I hummed, “Mmhmm,” and then admitted, “He wasn’t invited into my room.” Klaus quickly looked at me, and I said, “And that was after I stuffed a ping pong ball in his mouth.” He looked confused, so I spelled it out for him. “It exploded?”

“And then you daggered him?”

“Yeah, and then after he woke up, I shot him with a vervain dart, and Rebekah made Tyler turn . . . and he bit Kol a whole bunch.” 

His hands tightened around the steering wheel as he faced forward again, and he said, “It’s a wonder you’re still alive.” 

“I gave him his journal back, and we had a chat before I shot him. By the end, he was mostly annoyed with Rebekah for not warning him about me.” 

His look grew more cautious. “You can’t trust him.”

“Nope, but he sure is smart . . . smarter than you think.”

“I think he’s exactly as smart as he is, but he is self-absorbed and dangerous, and I know him well enough to know that his ego will not allow him to let what you did go.”

“Elijah said he has a short attention span and leaves ruin in his wake, and I don’t doubt that. Alice said he’s childish . . . and you’re saying that he holds a grudge, like the rest of you . . . I believe that too. Even Kol said that if I’m half as clever as I am cheeky, it should be an interesting game. I think he was thinking cat and mouse when this is all over, but I’m pretty sure he’s changed his mind about having it on his list of immediate things to do, which is probably for the best. I don’t think he would’ve liked being the mouse.”

Trying not to smile, Klaus said, “What makes you think he’s changed his mind?”

“Rebekah didn’t just send him to me without any warning . . . she left him behind.” Klaus glanced at me, and I said, “And I took care of him while he was working through the werewolf drool.”

“So he wouldn’t hold what you did against him.”

I shrugged. “Yes and no . . . It’s impossible to be altruistic, so the thought crossed my mind, and that is what I told the others after I said that he had to stay with us until he was through the worst of it because Rebekah was too irresponsible to get him back, but . . . I mainly felt bad for him for being left behind enemy lines like that, so I did as good a job as I know how to do taking care of him . . . And like I said, he’s smart, so he would’ve seen through it if I really had ulterior motives, and he definitely didn’t make it easy on me. Now we’re even, so as long as I don’t attack him again without provocation, he won’t kill me in retaliation for anything . . . It’d be an accident or some kind of drunken game gone wrong or if he wants to piss someone else off or if – “

“You’re starting to babble now.”

Well, saying as much as possible about meaningless things was as good a way as any not to say anything he shouldn’t hear. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” 

I smiled when he looked at me, like I'm onto you, and there was a long enough gap in conversation after that, that I was able to come up with my next plan. Normally, there’s absolutely nothing that would make me want to sleep around him, but after weighing up the risks of him attacking me in my sleep while he was driving versus me saying too much, it seemed to be the best option I had until whatever the hell he gave me wore off. Before I could put it into action, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me that he’d been bitten?”

“I called.”

“Once.”

“And left a message.”

“Saying we needed to talk.”

“Yep, so where was my return call? I told you before that I’m not going to chase you. One call is all you get.”

“I think it’s because you said you knew how annoying it is to be repeatedly asked for things. We’re talking about my brother. There’s a difference.”

“Well, next time, you know to call me back, don’t you? I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important.” 

Taking a deep breath in an attempt to remain calm, he asked, “How did you take care of him?”

“Gave him my sister’s room, kept him fed even though it made him cough . . . I know being bitten makes vampires ravenous, so he needed it, and it seemed to help with the fever somewhat . . . I could stop him from remembering things from his past if I read to him, but that only worked for a while, and then I left him to it for the most part unless he tried to leave. Then I had to sedate him with vervain, which I wouldn’t do with a normal vampire, because it’d just kill them faster, but I knew he’d be okay, and it was better than letting him run rabid all over town. I got good at ducking out of his way when he thought I was someone else . . . at least he didn’t think I was Katherine or Elena, so that was all right . . . Fought his invisible demons when he hallucinated them and needed it . . . kind of made him laugh a couple times when he snapped out of it and realized what I was doing.”

“You dealt with his dementia by yourself.”

Yeah, even during the funeral, I’d just sedated him with vervain, so nobody had to watch him. “Mm . . . I wouldn’t let anyone else in the room . . . He didn’t need any more stressors, and it wasn’t safe.”

“But it was safe enough for you?”

“I am unfortunately becoming quite the expert on taking care of vampires who have been infected with werewolf venom.” There was another pause in the conversation, and I watched him drive. He’d showed his hand somewhat on being the big brother and what that meant to him, and I could see just a hint of the weight that particular relationship had on him in his features. I think I wanted to help him out with that, and that's what possessed me to say, “He doesn’t like you very much.” Klaus’s expression went a bit more somber, and I added, “He feels left out . . . which I guess means he likes you a lot . . . despite all the things he calls you in the margins of his journal.” 

“You cracked his code.”

“Yep.” Getting more comfortable, I curled up in my seat and let my eyes close before saying, “He might be a troublemaker, but I think that’s because it’s where he thinks he fits . . . Want some crazy fun? Is everyone else being a bore? Let’s go find Kol. He’s up for anything, and because that’s when he’s important, he never wants the party to end even when it has to . . . It makes him annoying and a detriment . . . but when it comes to the important things, he sees the big picture . . . and not only does nobody take him seriously because he’s the wild one, but he also says what nobody wants to hear . . . so he’s ignored . . . and acts on it . . . and that makes him seem even more unpredictable . . . and if he is unreliable when it matters the most, then it’s because he gave up trying . . . does what he wants . . . when he wants . . . it’s just easier.”

A rough bump in the road kept me from drifting off, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he swerved into it on purpose. “What?”

Acting like he hadn’t done anything, he shrugged. “I didn’t say anything . . . I think you were saying that my brother does what he wants when he wants because it’s easier.”

“Oh . . . Sure you didn’t aim for a pothole on purpose?”

“Absolutely not . . . What do you mean it’s easier? Than asking for permission, or – “

“It’s easier than arguing about it with people who are supposed to be on your side but who won’t listen because they don’t like hearing reality when it’s counter to what they wish would happen . . . It is so frustrating when you know you’re right . . . and you still wind up having to take matters into your own hands . . . Either way, people get upset with you, so why not go with the easier option and skip trying to explain yourself before you do what needs to be done?”

“This is about Silas, isn’t it? You think you can relate to whatever yarns Kol’s spun, because – “

“He believes me about Silas . . . He’s killed scores of witches to keep Silas from being found, and – “

“Stay away from my brother.” 

As my eyelids grew heavier, I murmured, “But he’s my knight.”

“Your knight?”

“Mm . . . in my game against Silas.”

“I thought you were playing against me.”

“I am . . . but Silas is the one moving you whether you know it or not.”

Again there was silence, but as I started to drift into it, he asked, “How?”

Yeah, I’d sort of known he wouldn’t like the prospect of someone else controlling him. “He had the professor send the first hunter to town to complete the mark. Without that, you wouldn’t even know about the invisible tattoo or be trying to use it to find the cure . . . that tattoo isn’t just the map. It has the spell to raise Silas embedded in it . . . that’s why the professor wanted the tattoo completed as much as you do. He had no interest in the cure itself . . . and he found where Silas is without the map . . . that’s not what he needed. It was the spell.”

“So we just won’t use the spell.”

My eyes opened into tiny slits. He still didn’t believe Silas was real, but that wasn’t stopping him from trying to placate me, and I wasn’t sure why. Whatever the reason, if he wasn’t going to argue with me right now, then maybe I should milk it for all it was worth to say exactly what I wanted him to know, then fall asleep before I said too much.

My eyes closed again, and I continued, “But the cure is with Silas . . . He’s the immortal it was created to kill . . . And how was he imprisoned? Was he put into some kind of cell or was he imprisoned in his body – seems to be something people do to mostly immortal beings . . . If he’s just in a cell, what kind of willpower must he have to not take his one way out in thousands of years? If he’s in his body, then what kind of power must he have if he’s still able to get inside people’s minds? He got to the professor, and you should see the guy now . . . his brain is fried . . . just keeps saying, Silas’s name over and over again, nothing else, and Imelda said it’s because his head had been tampered with before what I did . . . an immortal, mind-controlling witch set on dropping the veil to the Other Side . . . tens of hundreds of thousands of monsters stretching back for even longer than you being released . . . and that will include your parents.”

“Eve?”

I didn’t open my eyes as I murmured, “The cure is like . . . it’s like one of those fish with the dangly things in front of it that looks like a worm . . . it draws you in and then before you know it, the bigger fish eats you.”

“Be that as it may, the fact remains that the cure still exists and is therefore a threat to me.”

Ah, so we were back to him openly disagreeing with me. Enough time must’ve passed that he’d worked through whatever issues he’d been having the last time he spoke. My eyes quickly opened, and I looked around to see that we were at his house. Excellent. With a groan, my eyelids squeezed shut. “Oh, I missed my window.”

Sounding amused, he asked, “And what window would that be?”

“The one where you were listening.”

“I was never listening to you.”

“You were placating me which is close enough.”

With a heavy sigh, he asked, “So, are you walking in, or am I carrying you?”

Without even opening my eyes, I answered, “’M walking,” as I sat up and felt for the door handle. One of my eyes had to open to find the pesky thing, and then I grumbled about it while I stumbled my way out and around the front of his car. My eyes landed on someone in the door, and my bitching about being brought back to Mystic Falls was quickly replaced with, “Hiya!” Klaus went from making sure I didn’t fall on my face to looking at his brother, and I quickly said, “Run, Kol . . . to the bar in Durham Lake . . . kill all the baby vampires he just made before Jeremy can grow that tattoo.” 

Klaus gave me a disgusted look over his shoulder before turning a darkened gaze up to his brother, and apparently, his brother knew what that look meant, because he was gone a second later. When Klaus looked down at me again, I beamed up at him until he said, “Didn’t think to tell him not to kill Damon too?” 

Looking towards the house to see how far I had to go, what the path looked like, and if I would be able to make it without any issues, I answered, “Probably better not to draw his attention to Damon where possible. He already doesn’t like him, but Alice will step in if - Shit. Alice. I was trying to keep them apart. He doesn’t treat her with respect.” I looked up at him again, and he rolled his eyes before grabbing me by the arm to guide me into the house. “I can get there just fine on my own.”

“Then why were you eyeing the step, like it was a mountain?”

I waited until I got up said step before saying, “Would I lie? Oh, wait, even if I could, I can’t, since you doped me up with some kind of truth serum.”

He smirked as he opened the door for me. “I can’t compel you, and I wanted to be certain of what your intention is with the cure, but it turns out you are still every bit the fan of bedtime stories that you were as a small child. The elixir should’ve mostly worn off by now. I suspect you are mainly toying with me at this stage and have been for most of our drive . . . sleeping it off was certainly a strategy in and of itself.”

My posture straightened as I looked around the house, and my voice dropped the groggy quality to it as I said, “Well, my offer of Christmas still stands. I did screw up the text, and I meant what I said about Silas, but I knew Kol would be here since I told him before we got to the bar that you were out of the house, and he finally had a definite window when you wouldn't be coming back. I was really hoping he’d find that sword. Doesn’t look like he did.” 

I looked up at Klaus to see what he thought of that, and he was looking up at the ceiling. Guess even Original Hybrids sought the help of the serenity gods from time to time. “Those vampires are most likely dead by now. Damon would’ve seen to it.”

“But Jeremy’s the one who has to do the killing, and he is a Gilbert. I hear we’re stubborn. Damon may have decided to use Matt as leverage, but then Alice would’ve gotten involved, because now that she’s free to make her own decisions, she’s decided to protect the living, which can be incredibly annoying at the wrong time, but useful too. It’ll lead to some kind of a stand-off. Kol will arrive and kill everything they’re arguing about . . . and that’s exactly what you deserve for trying to use me against Damon.” Swinging my arms around to clap at the front, I asked, “So, what now? You’re going to be holding onto me for a while if they have to have that tattoo well on the way to being completed before you beg them to take me back, so what do we do to kill the time?”


	53. Lessons in Art

My hands were clasped together behind my back as I leaned forward, eyes narrowed to see if there was anything hidden inside the painting that I hadn’t noticed yet. If this is what he’d donated the night of the Winter Festival, and it was here now, then nobody must have bought it, and I didn’t understand that. I’d actually liked it before he said it’s what he’d donated, but if it was unwanted, that made me like it more. “Nobody bought it?”

“I would’ve paid a substantial donation by the end of the night if nobody else had, but my night was cut short.”

“Mm.” Not letting myself get pulled into a discussion about what had happened to him to have his night cut short, I leaned back from the painting, saying, “If the money for it is being donated to this town, I’ll give you $20. Make it for a more worthwhile cause, like a free children’s hospital or something, and I’ll give you more.”

“You like it?”

What wasn't there to like? Looking up at him over my shoulder, I said, “Well, it’s Caroline, right?”

His eyes flicked down to me before darting to the painting. “Everyone seems to think it’s a snowflake.”

“Well, on the surface it is.”

“And Caroline herself said it evokes a feeling of loneliness.”

“There’s no way she’d think this is her . . . It’s from your perspective and people don’t see themselves through other people's eyes.”

“Go on.”

It was certainly starting to feel like I was in the middle of an exam right now, but okay. Studying the painting again, I answered, “Well . . . snowflakes are unique . . . each one is different from another . . . You see her as special. Usually, snowflakes are fleeting, but this one has been immortalized in the painting, which makes sense, since she’s a vampire, but its lines are also well defined. It looks strong instead of fragile. Caroline knows who she is. She’s put a lot of work in on making herself be who she is, and she is much stronger than people give her credit for being."

"Snow is often a symbol of purity, and this snowflake has an ethereal glow to it, and that is how you perceive her, as someone who is light and pure. It’s surrounded by darkness, but it isn't the snowflake’s darkness . . . It’s more like the person looking at the snowflake is in the darkness and the light from the snowflake is what’s drawing the person out into a clearing with the snowflake at the center of it. Why people only see it as a snowflake is obvious, but we’re also seeing it from the solitary perspective of being the person looking out from the darkness, which is why Caroline says it feels lonely . . . She was more right than she knew, but she wouldn’t see that snowflake as her.” I looked up at him again to see if that was right, and his shoulders fell as he looked down at me. “What?”

Inhaling deeply and holding the breath in his chest, he turned back to the painting before saying, “It’s yours. I’ll take care of the donation to any charity of your choosing.”

“Great. I’ll put it next to my piano.”

His eyebrow quirked up. “Interesting choice.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll start calling it The Killer Artists Room.” 

Turning away from me with a smile he didn’t want me to see, he retorted, “Enough with the stalling. Anyone would think you’re afraid of a little bit of paint with the way you keep finding reasons to run from it.”

“I’m not afraid of it. I just don’t get it.”

Going to the easel next to the one he’d set up for me, Klaus picked up a container of paint and tilted it in the direction of the painting he’d just given me. “Clearly you do.”

“But I don’t know how to do that.”

“And that is why I am attempting to show you how.” He nodded in the direction of my easel, and I sighed before taking up a place at it. His was next to mine, but it was at a slight angle, so we couldn’t see what the other was doing. I think it was so I couldn’t copy. “Now, as I was saying, art is a metaphor for control. You're making what you envision through sheer force of will . . . so what do you envision?”

Hmm. “Yeah, see, that’s where I’m stuck.”

Rolling his eyes, he put his paint down. “Where do you draw from when you play the piano?”

“I don’t know . . . I like it for the sake of it of course, but I suppose the way that I’d describe it is that it helps me tame the beast . . . that beast is still there, but it – “

“Quiets it?” I nodded, and he relaxed in understanding. Looking at the array of paints on the table between us, he asked, “If you had to choose colors to depict the beast in its pure, undiluted form . . . what would they be?” 

Studying the colors, I answered, “Black of course . . . red . . . If it’s undiluted, I guess that’s it.”

“So, using those two colors, take what you imagine that darkness to be and put it on that canvas.” I gave him a dubious look, and he added, “If you have the colors in mind, then you have an image of something.”

Picking up a jar of black paint, I looked at the brushes on the table next to my easel, and my mouth twitched to the side, while I considered them. Taking a brush, I examined it and said, “This doesn’t feel right.”

“Choose another one.”

“None of them feel right.”

“Then what does?” 

Nothing that tidy. Looking at the jar, I finally just dunked my fingers into it and smeared them on the canvas before glancing at him to see if that was right, and he grinned. “There’s no wrong way to do it as long as it looks the way you want it to look when you’re done.” 

Hm. Okay. I didn’t particularly get the sort of cathartic release from this that he must, but I’d give it a go. Might as well. So far, my one attempt to sneak out tonight had been thwarted by a Klaus who had found way too much enjoyment at standing right behind me the second my feet hit the ground after I’d gone to all the trouble of climbing out a second story window. Judging by the mess in a couple of rooms, Kol had done a pretty thorough job of searching this place, but my guess was that Klaus had learned at least one trick from his father. That sword had to be somewhere close but wouldn’t be on him until he needed it. I was thinking his car might be a good place to start. 

Until I had a chance to look, I didn’t have anything else to do other than keep Klaus occupied and out of trouble, which I guess is what he was doing with me too. He must know that even if he was preoccupied with entertaining me, the others around here were still worried that he was going to go all berserker at the slightest provocation, so most of them were going to put their all into doing what he wanted without him having to do much of anything at all. The only person I knew for sure was on my side was Kol. I’d had Damon, but I didn’t know what he was going to do to get me back, because Klaus taking off with me again was a real concern of his, and it’s not like I could contact him to let him know where we were or that Klaus was actually being a pretty decent host. My room was way too nice, and I was supposed to be getting room service in the morning. Sure beat being the house mom at the cabin, not that I was going to say that to Klaus. 

While I smeared more black paint on the canvas, I asked, “So Berserkers . . . real or myth?”

Without taking his attention away from what he was imagining he wanted on the blank canvas before him, he picked up some oil pastels rather than paint as he murmured, “Concentrate on what you’re creating.”

“Okay, Mom.” 

Slapping paint on to cover more of the white canvas, I ignored him turning to look at me. His head tilted slightly to the side before he sighed in frustration. “Well, are you going to explain what you mean, or not?”

“I’ve had a long day . . . concentrate on reading _Beowulf_ . . . implied no talking.”

I think I was getting somewhere. Everything was almost black, and I liked the chaotic swirls that my fingers left behind in the paint. I bet I could do something similar to create lines that would form features even if the whole thing was entirely black except for where my fingers had left their mark. “I’m nothing like the woman I met.” I didn’t respond, and he quickly added, “Even I, the worst of the worst, found her filicidal tendencies so repulsive that it was my moral obligation to compel her into ending her own life in front of the child that she was so willing to sacrifice for that treacherous Petrova hag’s freedom.”

I snorted. “That is so not true. You had her take her daylight necklace off in the sun to prove a point to said child, so she wouldn’t run before you could sacrifice her.” 

He turned back to his canvas with a scowl. “Well, if it wasn’t true then, it certainly is now . . . Can you really not see that she betrayed you?” 

I’d been trying to work out since Mom died what exactly she’d been thinking going to Klaus, and the day she’d come back from being dead hadn’t really seemed like the time to bring it up. Didn’t particularly want to ask him what happened either, because there’s no way I’d get an honest account, and he’d told me enough just now for me to kind of confirm what I’d already pieced together, which was that Mom knew what Katherine was planning and offered to broker the deal for her because she hadn’t trusted anyone else, including Katherine, to control what Klaus was told. Klaus’s hatred of Katherine was legendary, and Mom had studied him extensively, so she must’ve known that he was going to compel the truth out of anyone who went to him, but if he was given the information about the doppelganger before she was compelled and seemed hesitant to say anything about Katherine, then he would focus his attention during the compulsion on Katherine and her whereabouts instead of the intel that’d been freely given about the doppelganger. 

I was sure it must’ve worked, because I didn’t think she told him that there were two of us, but where she had underestimated him was in him compelling her to help him catch Katherine and of course the part about him compelling her to kill herself. That'd left Katherine being the one he went to for who was who in town while he was doing his recon through Jeremy’s eyes, but I didn’t think that even Katherine had told him more than that Elena had a sister, because he didn’t know I was Elena’s identical twin until we met. I think his exact words had been, 'I had no idea the resemblance was so identical,' and he didn’t know the plan was to substitute me in on the sacrifice until after that. 

I could almost feel his eyes burning a hole into the side of my head with the unspoken question of, ‘Well?’ It would appear he wanted an answer. “She didn’t betray me. The plan was always for you to kill me.”

His face fell somewhat. “Which is precisely my point. She, as your primary care giver, allowed your head to be filled with that nonsense from such an early age that you still don’t see it as the betrayal that it is.”

“The witches – “

“I don’t care what prophecies she was told. Prophecies are almost always unclear and biased by the witch who delivers them, something I’m sure she was well aware of by the time she came in search of me . . . A mother is supposed to fight for her child.”

Ah, this was as much about his mother as it was about mine. “And in her own way, she did . . . She turned for me. Every time I came back from a hunt with Dad, I guess I was different, and she didn’t like what I was becoming. She also wanted me to maybe consider turning too when the time came, so if she showed me it was an option, then I might. Of course after she turned, she hated being a vampire, and instead of keeping me from hunting to prevent me from going full-monster, she sent me out hunting with Dad more, but the point is that she tried . . . It is because of her that I don't see all vampires as monsters, which is probably the most important lesson I could've ever learned, and I wouldn’t be who I am without her, so . . . “

He went back to sketching away on his canvas before muttering, “And I am not merely giving you a task to keep a nuisance quiet. I am fully invested in you learning this.” Curling my fingers into the paint jar, I took a big pool of it out and slammed it on the canvas in response before swirling it around. Hm. I kind of liked the texture that a thicker layer created against the thin layer what was already there. It made it stand out and seem darker. I threw a few more pools of paint on the canvas and started trying to shape them into something. “Not going to argue that she didn’t find you a nuisance?”

I grumbled, “Look who wants to get chatty now,” before I went back to trying to find a way to get the shapes I wanted in the thicker paint. “Fail to see how bringing up Berserkers has derailed into this topic of conversation. I just figured that since you were alive back then you might know.”

A few minutes later, he was at it again. “Your father was more like Mikael?”

“I think from what I know . . . Damon and Stefan’s Dad had more in common with Mikael. He never liked Damon, always singled him out, was abusive, and he did kill them both just for the shame they might bring on the Salvatore name by being sympathizers . . . My Dad started out okay . . . He didn’t realize that he was creating a monster, because his own darkness was growing too. He could say the cruelest things, have me do unspeakable things to vampires that he wouldn’t have even been able to do himself, and pushed me away because of my Mom, but I know he loved me, and that is why he was so hard on me . . . He wanted me to be able to take care of myself . . . and for that reason he and Mikael do not line up even if they’re on the same spectrum.”

“And what spectrum would that be?”

“One did everything he did out of love, and the other hate. They’re opposite extremes and seem to create similar results - monster children who have serious issues with interpersonal relationships, except I don’t have a fear of abandonment.” 

I must’ve unintentionally hit a nerve. “Then I presume that given the neglect you also experienced from a very young age, it’s because all you have ever known is abandonment, so you do not fear it.” I didn’t respond, and glancing at me out of the corner of his eye he asked, “No arguments?”

“Nah, that’s a pretty solid theory, but I'd also add that my issues seem to be in letting others close.”

Nerve immediately soothed, and he must've felt a little bad about getting snarky over it. “Because it's the opposite extreme, and you've seen how detrimental love can be." I nodded, and he said, "I would also point out that you are not, in fact, a monster.” 

“Well, I’m about 50/50. That makes me a nice shade of grey.”

There was a long pause before he asked, “Does that make me the blackest of black?” 

Exhaling a laugh, I shook my head. “You are charcoal grey, but you’re still grey . . . Alec’s Dad, Mikael, Alice’s husband, the inanimate necromancer’s talisman . . . They were the blackest of black.”

Coloring in on his canvas with the pastels a few minutes later, he asked, “How did you get Mikael to drop his guard around you?”

Turning away from my easel to look at him, I answered, “Before I say anything about that, I want to stress that what I said before was true. I needed you to come back so I could use you as bait for him . . . That’s the first and last time I’ve ever used someone else as bait, but I needed to know where that white oak stake was, and Rebekah said he wouldn’t bring it out of hiding until he was sure he was going to be able to use it. I also needed his attention to be mainly on you. I don’t want you getting all pissed off at me for me being part of the ruse to bring you back.” He stopped to look at me in consideration before giving me a single nod, and I went back to my painting. “I made myself as invisible as possible while I was observing him during their meeting. They forgot I was there. I said a total of 2 short sentences to him before I stabbed him in the heart with the dagger, and then made myself scarce until the night of the dance.”

Watching me, he asked, “What were the 2 sentences?”

“Since Stefan was compelled by you, Mikael was going to have Elena dagger him. He said you would leave nothing to chance when it comes to trust, so I said I’d do it because you’d never believe Elena did it if I was there too.”

“I wouldn’t have.”

“I know . . . and then Stefan opened his big mouth and said you think I’m a wolf in sheep’s clothing but that Elena’s just a sheep, so you’d expect me to be able to pull it off, and Mikael was like, ‘would he now,’ and I took the dagger from Elena and stabbed him in the heart before he’d even completely turned back to look at me again. She got mad at me for not giving him fair warning . . . I had to spell it out for her. He wouldn’t leave anything to chance either on bringing you back, so if there was even the slightest possibility that you seeing me as duplicitous would hinder that in any way – “

“He would’ve killed you in the next breath.”

“Exactly. It would've made Elena sticking a dagger in his heart more believable, since Stefan would've had to say it was after he killed me, and there'd be no room for doubt on your part.” 

“You knew that's what he was thinking from your observations of one meeting?” I nodded, and he asked, “What else did you observe about him?”

“He was cold and calculating, but regimented to the extreme, so surprising him would be more likely than being surprised by him. I knew he’d screw up their plan at the last second, because chasing you was all he had. You were the only prey worthy of his time, and what was he going to do with his life after he killed you? Retire on a beach somewhere? I think not. I knew that when you got away again, he’d blame everyone in the room and kill all of us. He didn’t feed solely off of vampires for moral reasons. He’d easily kill a human if he gained something from it, like he thought he did when Katherine was posing as Elena. It was more about thinking that he was above feeding on humans and proving he was the ultimate predator’s predator . . . I think he might be my most satisfying checkmate . . . no offense.”

“Well, I did kill your mother, so none taken . . . Did he make a mistake the way you thought he would?”

“You were there.”

“Let’s just say I was preoccupied.”

“It was subtle, but he telegraphed to you that Damon was coming up behind you without knowing he did. I highly doubt it was the first time he’s done something like that.”

“Are you saying that every time we got away, it’s because he let us?”

I really wasn’t trying to diminish the role Klaus had played in keeping his family one step ahead of the guy for 1000 years. “Only the times when he was face-to-face close . . . not the rest. Any time he gave a monologue instead of just killing you or killed someone you cared about instead of you or - ”

“He killed my favorite horse once.”

“What an asshole. I’d kill him again if I could for that alone.” 

I heard him chuckle and glanced over at him. He really was at peace doing this. It was the most human that he’d looked. It certainly made conversing with him easier. Leaning in to look closely at what he was doing with the pastel in his hand, he asked, “What was the moment . . . the one when you were in Hell that made you think you were who you always aspired to be?” and I couldn’t help but see him as a little kid, coloring at the kitchen table, while he innocently made conversation with the kid next to him. There was something almost sweet about it. I, on the other hand, seemed to be the kid who was finger-painting and making a mess.

Looking down at myself, I was mostly covered in paint at this point. It was up my arms, all over my shirt, even on my jeans. With a slight scowl, I looked back up to my painting and decided that I might as well keep going if the damage had already been done. “You’re not gonna paint it, are ya?”

With a shrug, he answered, “I’m merely curious.”

Making some swirls near the bottom of my painting with my fingers so that part would look more nebulous, I thought about how to explain it. “I wished myself to the boat Phlegyas ferries on the marshes of the 5th Circle, and it’s a good thing I couldn’t see, or it would’ve been sensory overload. The smell of rotting flesh hit me at the same time that the noise did, but the noise won out as being more overwhelming. It was so loud . . .They weren’t screams anymore. They were this animalistic cacophony of all these voices joining to create a single roar."

"I was sure that if Alec wasn’t in Limbo he had to be one of the sullen under the surface, so I tried calling for him. I could hear him shout back from the lower levels when I was in Limbo, but I couldn’t hear him when I was there in the midst of them . . . I knew that I was the talisman’s master, and I thought maybe that the reason I’d been able to hear him in Limbo was because I’d amplified my hearing or something, so I got to my feet and tried to amplify my voice, and I did, but everything around me got louder too . . . so loud that everything shook. I figured that if the volume could go up, then it must be able to go down, so I yelled ‘quiet,’ with every ounce of authority that I possess . . . and it immediately went dead silent with the exception of the splashes from the souls of real people fighting on the surface of the water, and I guess that was it . . . It just sort of hit me that there I was, standing in a boat in the middle of the 5th Circle of Hell, and I had nothing to prove to anyone, including myself . . . I was already the hunter I never thought I’d be.” 

I added some definition to some wispy shapes near the top of what was starting to look more and more like a really kick ass shadow monster rising out of a chaotic black cloud. The thinner layer of paint almost looked like a dark gray in comparison to the shadow monster now. No need for teeth. Those would diminish the power of it by making it too cartoonish. The unsettling bits should be the razor sharp claws and the eyes. “But then I came back to the real world, and I’m nearly as frustrated now as I was at the height of when I was trying to convince everyone not to kill you. I expect to exceed it by the time this is all over.”

Turning to a red jar of paint, I picked it up, and took a closer look. A quick sniff, and I asked, “Is this blood?” Without tearing himself away from his easel, Klaus hummed in the affirmative, and I looked at the blood again. Real blood felt more than right in this instance. “Perfect.” With a smirk, he gave me a side-glance, and I reached for a brush rather than just sticking my hands into the blood. 

It’d dry brown, wouldn’t it? Still. There should be blood somewhere in this painting. A few brush strokes of the red to mix into the textured and swirled black paint of the cloud at the bottom, and I blended the lines with my finger, so it merged with the black then picked up blood red paint, or at least I was pretty sure it was paint. After blowing on the thicker paint to dry it out where I wanted the shadow monster's eyes, I used a thinner brush to work on the outline of them – angular red slits that opened up out of the darkness. I used my finger to lightly smear the lines and fill in the eyes. There would be no pupils, just a faded red that was darker around the rims and lighter towards the center to make them seem hollow. I needed to do multiple layers to make the eyes stand out against the black, but they were pretty eerie when I was done with them. 

Hm . . . wonder if I should add a tree in the background over the shadow monster’s shoulder . . . a hangman’s tree, I think they’re called . . . I went back to using the black paint, but with a brush this time to get the lines of the branches crisp and defined. I had the tree grow out of a little hill at the bottom of it, and how about a blood red moon looking out from behind the tree? It’d certainly make the tree easier to see through all the black in the background. I had to do fewer layers of the red paint on the thinner black paint in the corner than I had the eyes where the black paint was thicker, but I still had to do more than one layer and then brush up on the branches of the tree a little when the moon was done. There was something missing. 

Grabbing the bottle of real blood, I considered it before using the blood to go lightly along the outer edges of the part of the shadow monster nearest to the tree and moon to make it look like the light from the moon was shining on it from behind, and when I’d smoothed the blood out with my finger so no lines could be detected, it seemed to be exactly the effect that’d been missing.

When that was done, I took a step back. Did I want to add anything else? Not really. Crossing my arms over my chest, I said, “I think I’m done,” and Klaus came around to look at it. He didn’t say anything, so I looked up at him over my shoulder. “There’s a whole lot of scrutinizing going on up there for something that’s a first attempt.” 

The corners of his mouth turned up. “Are you happy with it?”

“I’m not unhappy with it.”

Pointing to the bottom corner, he said, “You need to sign it.”

I took the brush out of the blood red paint jar and quickly painted ‘EVE,’ before dropping it back into the jar and asked, “Now what?”

“Now, explain it to me.”

Waving my hand over the shadow monster, I said, “This is my dark side . . . It’s rooted in all of the tumultuous emotions I push down,” and then flicking a finger at the tree, I said, “And I suppose that’s what allows it to be fully unleashed – “

“As an executioner?”

“Yeah, because there’s a justice aspect to it . . . but the full moon’s always there . . . in the background.”

“So, unlike a werewolf that only changes with the moon, you can transform at any time for any reason, but to keep it at bay, it’s filtered through seeking some kind of justice, or righting some kind of wrong, and the use of blood is self-explanatory . . . Can I keep this?”

“You really want it?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.”

“Sure, then I guess . . . Can I see what you did?”

“No.”

My brow furrowed in annoyance. “Why not?”

“Because it’s not done yet.”


	54. Alpha

Who knew what time it was? Sleep was out. It was a waiting game at this point. I’d say he’d normally have a massive edge over me because of what he was, but I had been able to sleep on the drive here. That didn’t mean that I wasn’t a little cranky though. My volume rose with each fast-paced word I spat out. “Oh my god, stop killing me! We’re on the same team!”

I threw a venomous look in Klaus’s direction, and he was in no way attempting to hide how funny he thought it was. Apparently, he had gotten me my TV and video game console, but I hadn’t stipulated that they be delivered to the boarding house, so he’d set them up in a room here; I think as an excuse to get me to come over here more after I told him I wasn’t that impressed with his house when he was showing it to me the first time. It's just that there’d been a lot times between then and now that he hadn’t wanted me anywhere near his house, so he hadn’t told me about it until he needed to find another way to keep me occupied when we finished with our art lesson earlier. Now, he was insisting on finding out what had been worth giving Kol back to him and purposely ruining it for me. “So you say, however, I think that technically, I belong on theirs.”

“They are zombies. You are a vampire-werewolf hybrid.”

“Precisely. We’re both members of the living dead.”

“Two very different categories of the living dead. For starters, a zombie wouldn’t be able to sit here and shoot me repeatedly. Its thumbs would fall off.”

“Well, you would know.”

“That’s right, I would, so stop shooting me and start shooting them, you turncoat.” 

The doorbell rang, and I looked towards the front of the house. He was already out of his chair by the time I looked back at him to see if he was expecting someone at this hour. I would say not. “Stay here.” Pointing back at me, he added, “I mean it,” and I immediately re-started another game for the noise, waited all of 30 seconds, and then hopped over the back of the couch I was sitting on before heading out the door myself. 

Instead of following him to the front to find out who it was, I headed for the back door. A minute later, and despite the odd shape of this mansion where the wings fanned out at angles from the main part of the house, I’d nearly made it all the way along the left wing. My intention wasn’t to leave. Doing that would be a step too far, and I had breakfast heading my way at some point. I came around the corner that brought me to the front of the left wing and stopped about halfway down it when Elena’s car came into view in the driveway. What the hell was she doing here? 

Now he’d think I’d orchestrated this in some way and had probably already gone to check and see if I was where he’d left me. That’s okay. I could salvage this if I just went back and said I had to go to the bathroom or something. I turned to head back and stopped at the corner when I saw him come around the other corner at the far side of the left wing. He was looking towards the woods, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t look this way in about a second. 

I quickly side-stepped back around the corner and pivoted so that my back was against the house. Did I have time to get to the front and head in that way? Probably not without him hearing me. He wasn’t running. He was walking, and I heard every fast paced step as he got to within a few feet of me, but I stayed where I was and remained calm. 

He nearly walked right on past me on his way to where the cars were parked but stopped abruptly a few feet away. Damn my tell-tale heart. Normally, it wasn’t a problem, because I found ways to mask it with other sounds, being somewhere they thought was safe and where nobody else would be, like their own home, or through chaotic circumstances that made beings with supernatural hearing focus more on what was going on around them than on something as quiet as a heartbeat, but on this peaceful night . . . Slowly his head turned in my direction, and I offered up my most charming smile. “Lovely night for a stroll, isn’t it?” 

His mouth drew into a thin line as he approached. “Your sister’s here.”

“So I see.” 

“Your stroll wouldn’t have happened to be to her car, would it?”

“Oddly enough, no.” He relaxed somewhat, but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t want him to feel like I’d been doing a runner on him, because he really had been putting in a lot of effort to be decent to me while I was here. Good behavior deserved to be rewarded, so I gave him the truth. “It was to your car so I could see if that’s where that sword is. Keep it close at all times but never on you until you need it, right?” 

He went motionless for a moment before rolling his eyes as he pulled me away from the house with next to no effort, and I promptly found myself being picked up off the ground by the scruff of the hooded sweatshirt he’d lent me after our art class. Could I fight him off, kick at him, tug at his arm, slide out of the over-sized shirt to make a break for it? Probably, but doing any of that wouldn’t get me very far. Crossing my arms over my chest as he started carrying me in the direction of the front door, I grumbled, “I hardly think this is necessary. You’re going to embarrass me in front of my sister. I only just now have her thinking that I know what I’m doing when it comes to you supernatural beings.”

With a barely concealed smirk, he quipped, “Perhaps you should have thought of that before you did what I told you not to do.” 

Scowl still firmly in place, I retorted, “Yeah, well, she wouldn’t be here for no reason, so if this is what I think it’s about, you’re gonna want to let me go anyway.” We shared a side-glance, and I added, “My knight is a champ at whipping up chaos, and your queen can’t handle it.” 

He flicked a quick glance in the direction my sister would be. He hadn’t considered her one of the most valuable pieces on his side rather than just a pawn, but if I did, then maybe there was a reason for that, and he could use it. Damn. Still standing at the front door where he’d presumably told her to wait while he went in search of me, she'd probably heard us before she saw us come around the side out of the darkness, because she was already turned our way. “Eve?”

I waited until we were closer to say, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t know what she did, Klaus, but I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

‘Please don’t hurt her,’ was heavily implied. Huffing out a sigh as we passed her on our way into the house, I shook my head. “It’s all good, Little Sister, I have this totally under control.”

The next thing I knew, I was being thrown back into the house from the threshold. It was a perfect throw not to do any damage. I hit the ground on my side, slid across the waxed floor, and exhaled a laugh as my back hit the wall. “Oh man, why haven’t we been doing that the whole time?” I laughed again before looking up at Klaus, and oh right. He wanted the people out there doing his bidding, so he didn’t want anyone out there thinking I was on holidays here. Didn’t want him to actually do anything nefarious to me to make them do what he wanted, did I? Clearing my throat, I tried again, “I mean . . . I think I’ve learned my lesson. I definitely won’t do that again.”

His eyes shot up to those gods of serenity in the ceiling at my unconvincing tone before he slid his game face on and turned to Elena. “As you can see, I’m busy, so to what do I owe the pleasure, Elena? For your sister’s sake, I hope it’s that you brother has completed more of that tattoo.”

“I, um . . . “ Her eyes shot past him to me, and I winked to let her know I was fine. I did not want her to have yet another reason to blame on me for finding this cure. Between her wanting to get rid of the sire bond so I’d stay and now this, I was thinking that I might need to start focusing on her at least as much as Klaus . . . maybe I could have Damon invoke the sire bond to make her stay out of it. Yeah, I think that would probably be okay if the world was at stake, wasn’t it? I mean I had let him do it to make her divulge her deepest thoughts and feelings regarding me to prove a point to Stefan because I’d been tired and cranky. How much worse was it than that? While I pondered the morality of taking away my sister’s free agency on this one eensey, weensey, teeny, tiny, little thing, her attention darted back up to him. “Actually, it’s about that. I need you to call Kol off.” 

I hummed an almost inaudible, ‘Mmhm,’ that I’m sure not even she could hear, or if she could, she didn't know what it meant, but Klaus’s posture went rigid. “What does that have to do with me? Your sister is the one who wound him up and set him loose.”

She looked at me again, and I gave her an sheepish smile to go with my shrug. What he’d said was totally true, and I wasn’t going to bother trying to deny it. _Get mad at me. Get mad at me. Get mad at me._ If she got angry enough with me, then she wouldn’t mind if I left with Damon to get rid of her sire bond to him. That'd be one less reason for her to want the cure. Of course, Jeremy’s safety was an issue too. 

I'd have to figure out what to do about that, but I was sure I could come up with something that would keep all parties happy, something like bringing Jeremy with us when we left, so he could hunt, which would keep Kol away from him and Klaus happy if I gave him legitimate updates. That didn't mean I had to be super speedy about it either though, like one vampire for Jeremy per hunt, and I'd take the rest if there were more there. If Kol still hadn't found that sword by the time the tattoo was complete, then I guess it would provide him with the opportunity to swoop in and take the sword from Klaus when Klaus finally brought it out of hiding to use it as a key for the map, a little like the way Rebekah had swooped in to get that white oak stake after Mikael brought it out of hiding. Then that would be the end of all this nonsense, and if Klaus was going to be angry with anyone, it'd be Kol. I'd have to work out the details of that ending should it come to that, and I'd have to find a way to get Kol to go along with it, but I liked where that plan was heading. 

It’d just leave Elena wanting the cure for herself as her last remaining issue, but if, while I was hunting with Jeremy, it bought Kol time to find that sword, or even if he did steal it at the end, it didn't matter if she wanted it, because she wouldn't be getting it anyway, and there'd be no need to have Damon invoke the sire bond. Win. Win. Win. 

Unfortunately, it would appear that since she was starting to think of me as family, she wasn’t going to hold me to account, particularly in front of the enemy. Turning a glare up to Klaus, she argued, “It’s not her fault. It’s yours. You started this by murdering all those people so Jeremy would have vampires to kill, and now Kol has killed them all, taken Damon, and is after Jeremy.”

Well, shit. If he took Damon, that couldn’t be good. Looking back at me over his shoulder, Klaus’s eyebrow arched in the universal expression of ‘I told you so,’ as he mimicked my, “Mmhm.” I rolled my eyes, and he turned back to Elena as she pleaded, “Please, Klaus, I’m begging you.”

Taking a phone from his pocket with an exaggerated sigh, he flicked through it to the right number before pushing send and put it on speaker phone. I suspect it was specifically so I’d know how wrong I’d been, as Kol’s voice floated out of what appeared to be my own phone. _”Relax, Darling, if you’re calling to check up on the current state of affairs, I got here just in time.”_

Maintaining his composure as he started to pace in front of me, Klaus said, “Only a few hours, and I hear you’ve already gone and made a mess, Little Brother.”

There was a brief pause. _”Come on, Nik. I was only having some fun.”_

I was a little surprised on where Klaus went with his next question. “Where is Damon Salvatore?” Sparing a brief look in my direction, Klaus turned away from me saying, “Any vendettas you may have against Eve aside, I’m going to need you to let him go and come home.“

_”Vendettas against the only ally I have? You must be joking. I simply don’t like the guy, Nik.”_

Klaus’s movement stopped as his back went ramrod straight. Despite what I’d said to him in the car about Kol, it hadn’t hit him until that moment how much ground he’d actually ceded to me with his brother, because he'd mostly thought I was being naive, but now it was his brother saying it, and that might prove to be a problem for me. He was territorial over a lot of things, but nothing more than with his family. While he carried on with whatever threat he made to Kol about going back into a box if he didn’t stay out of trouble, Elena and I shared a look. She should go. I tilted my head in the direction of her car, and she quickly shook her head. I gave her an insistent nod. She gave me an insistent shake of her head, and both of us looked up at Klaus at the same time when he turned back in our direction. “Listen to me, Kol. Stay away from the Gilbert boy. You understand?”

 _Fine. I won’t touch him. You have my word._ ” 

I cringed as the call ended. “Ugh, it’s worse than I thought.”

Klaus brushed off my concerns. “He gave me his word.” 

Getting to my feet, I muttered, “Think I’m starting to see why you think he’s always betraying you, Klaus.” 

Maybe I shouldn’t expound on that. It’d be to my own detriment if I once again suggested that I understood his scheming brother in a way he couldn’t, especially when the reason he couldn’t was because he was gullible when it came to his brother, and I totally got that, because I was the same way with Elena. He wanted to believe in Kol so much that he overlooked what was obvious treachery until it bit him in the ass. I definitely shouldn’t say that, and he certainly didn’t look like he wanted a mediator right now, but what he wanted and what he needed were two very different things, and at the moment, we all needed to be on the same page. 

With a soft sigh, I said, “He’s a trickster through and through. It’s all in the word play. Just because he won’t touch Jeremy doesn’t mean that he can’t have someone else do it for him. It’s especially important if he doesn’t want the hunter’s curse haunting him, and it’s a bonus if the hunter’s curse attaches itself to a vampire he doesn’t like, which is why he took Damon in the first place. The call didn’t change his plans even a little. All it did was buy him time. He knows what giving his word means to you, and believe it or not, it means the same to him, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be strategic with it. By giving it, he made you feel like you could take your eye off of him until it’s too late to stop whatever he’s setting in motion, and yet, he will still expect to be fully pardoned by you, because he kept his word, so when you do retaliate, it’ll continue the cycle of him thinking that he’s being unfairly treated, which will lead to the next round of you feeling betrayed by him when he does something sneaky to get around you again after you won’t listen to him and so on and so forth for the next thousand years.”

His jaw had set. A mask that he’d perfected over a 1000 years was up to prevent anyone from knowing what he was thinking, but if I had to bet on what it was, I’d place a million dollars on it being that I was right, and between Kol being Kol and me saying what I had, he was pissed off to the point that he was close to seeing red. He was part werewolf after all, and his family was definitely a trigger for him. Finally, he turned to Elena saying, “Go. I’ll take care of it,” and she looked at me.

“What about – “

Walking past me, he growled, “No.” Yeah, he was going to keep me here longer than he should just so I wouldn’t be right in what I’d said earlier about him wanting to let me go after his queen complained about my knight. Looking at Elena, I shrugged, like ‘what can you do,’ and at the added worry in her eyes, I nodded towards her car again with a look to let her know I’d be okay. She had things to do, like go find Damon and protect Jeremy, and Klaus had told her to go. Unless she planned on going up against him when he was clearly in a mood, she didn’t have a choice here.

She had filled me in on what I’d been missing out on while I was here though, and if I was going to reward Klaus for good behavior, then I should do the same for my sister. After the flicker of a smile, I mouthed thank you to her, and she relaxed. I wasn’t upset with her in the slightest just then, because I didn't think she'd screwed anything up, and I think that’s what finally swayed her. After a deep breath, she cast a look in the direction Klaus had gone and gave me a nod to let me know she’d go before shutting the door behind her.

I might’ve wondered where Klaus had gone after that, but it wasn’t hard to find him. Just had to follow the sounds of smashing coming from the room we’d been in when Elena rang the bell. Casually leaning up against the door frame, I watched him throw one hell of a temper tantrum with the TV and chairs, pretty much anything he could get his hands on was being hurled against one of the 4 walls, and it totally made sense. I had gotten the things in this room for giving Kol back to him, and it would seem that I hadn’t quite kept up my end of the bargain on it. When he finally noticed me, he paused before turning in my direction. His posture remained tense. There was a low growl in his chest, and the golden hue to his eyes made a nice little appearance. 

Anger is what he expected, maybe even what he wanted most, however, cowering in fear or exhibiting hurt through some kind of pitiful display, like sadness would also work, but if he was expecting tears over a gaming system I’d barely even gotten to play, he wasn’t going to get them. If what he wanted was for me to yell at him, then he wasn’t going to get that either, and as for fear? I remained casual and loose in my body language, and my nonchalant expression had to have said better than words that I wasn’t bothered by any of this.

Not only was my lack of response a challenge in and of itself, but it was also the only way to challenge him while simultaneously diffusing the situation to make him be the one to back down first. His eyes went back to their normal color, but that didn’t mean there still wasn’t a dangerous glint to them. In fact, if I didn’t know any better – yep, less than a second later, he flashed forward and slammed me against the wall on the opposite side of the hall. It was a power move he used on me from time to time, like picking me up so that my feet were off the ground was meant to show me on a primitive level that he was the alpha here. In that instant, it didn’t much faze me, and that provoked him more. “What game are you playing now?!” 

_Oh, my hulking hybrid friend, if you think this is anything less than an all-out battle of wills, then you’ve already lost._ “Not a game.” 

“You’ve been talking non-stop all night, and now you suddenly have nothing – “ I would’ve definitely had more airtime in my future if there hadn’t been something about my expression that caught his attention at the last second. Stopping himself from throwing me, he slammed me back into the wall and looked deep into my eyes before confusion and then certainty crossed his features. “I’ve heard that you claim to do this . . . Turn it back on.”

I knew full well what he meant, but him being so sure of what he was seeing when Damon was the only other person who ever really saw it for what it was made me curious. “Turn what on?” 

He focused on the pulse in my neck as he said, “Slow and steady heartbeat.” Taking a whiff of my hair, he added, “Not a hint of fear . . . I'm certainly not getting frost bite from touching you.” He leaned back to look at me and said, “If this isn’t you when you’re hunting – “

“It’s not.” Not all battles were physical, and if I did turn this into one, then regardless of the outcome, I would have lost. 

“That curse of yours doesn’t lie.”

If he was implying that meant I wasn’t angry, then he’d be right. “Nope. I’m just waiting for you to catch up. Your brain’s a little slower than your more primitive self, but I have faith that you’ll get there eventually.”

His eyes narrowed as he leaned closer, and there was another deep purr in his chest. “I can assure you that mocking me right now – “

“I’m not . . . Understanding people’s perspectives and rationalizing their behavior has long been a talent of mine, therefore, I’m waiting for you to register that I’m not upset by this, nor will I be, so you might as well pack it in now.”

And just like that, his anger was disarmed as his more rational mind began trying to piece together the puzzle he saw before him. Studying my face, he murmured, “You were presented with a threat, and - “ His eyes flicked to mine. “You’re not angry. You’re not fearful. If I would have thrown you, you wouldn’t have laughed this time. You would’ve remained like this . . . You’re still very present and clear minded, so you haven’t frozen the way some might, and you’re not bored the way you almost look, because you feel nothing . . . You aren’t hiding your emotions. You’ve learned to temporarily eliminate them so you won’t react impulsively. It allows you to remain level-headed when you need to be, and you can do it faster than any vampire can flip their switch and under conditions no vampire would or could. That night after the attack on you with Expression . . . before you got to the grave, your wrath kept coming out in short bursts when you spoke, so it was there when the stake entered your hand and gone by the time the tip touched Bonnie's throat. You would have killed her then and there, but this is what stopped you . . . It’s why you said that you knew she did what she did to keep you from taking any of the blame for it.” 

If he saw that it was beneficial in some way, then it was a long shot, but I seized on the opportunity I saw before me. “Call it empathy, and you can have it with or without mercy.”

His eyebrows arched, like he thought that was a valid point, and then he noticed something that made him briefly smile. “And just like that, I have you back. I am sure I will be paying for this transgression for some time to come, won’t I?” Putting me down before turning away from me, he added, “And I suppose now would be a good time to remind you to stay out of my family’s business. I do not need, nor do I want you to mend my relationship with Kol.” 

Following him down the hall, I muttered, “Well, that sounds suspiciously like you think I was trying to help. Unfortunately, your first impulse was correct. I am definitely trying to steal Kol away from you.”

“Ah, and the snarky retribution begins. I believe your sister calls it compartmentalizing.”

“Actually, I called it that first, and no, that was just good old fashioned sarcasm.”

“And you, my trickster in the making, have not agreed to my boundaries concerning my family.”

The corners of my mouth turned up. “Now why would I limit myself with a blanket agreement on staying out of your family’s business? What if your family has you bound with no way out, decides to dangle you over a tank of water full of vervain, wolfsbane. and a great white shark, and they proceed to lower you into it. Would you not want me to play mediator at that point?”

“I perish the thought.”

“And what if – “

“Unless you’re asked.” 

It was a huge concession on his part. As he stopped, I looked up at him, and he seemed to mean it, but I couldn’t agree to that either. “If you’re asking me to stop filling you in on the observations I make, then - “

“Observations, like the ones you made with Mikael?” 

Yeah, see, that’s why it was probably better to at least keep him somewhat looped in on things I noticed, or he’d get paranoid again about what I was thinking and start dosing me with more witchy truth serum. “Well, I mean, I was planning to kill Mikael, but I do it with everyone from Damon to Matt Donovan. It goes hand-in-hand with the empathy. I know it probably makes how I interact with people 10x more complicated than it is for normal people, but for me, it’s not even second nature. It’s as natural as breathing as far as survival goes.”

I hadn’t been asking a question, but he seemed to want to answer one anyway. “Because violent excursions were the only times you were allowed out of your metaphorical cage, so that is how you learned to interact with the world, and now your natural inclination is to turn every interaction you have into a fact finding mission where you search for strengths to limit and weaknesses to exploit as well as counters to moves others haven’t even considered making yet.” 

I knew that’s what I did, and I knew that hunting vampires from such an early age was why I could relate more to monsters than normal people at times, but he managed in one sentence, to succinctly explain something I’d been trying to explain to myself since I’d come out of hiding. “Mmm . . . yeah, I suppose that and trying to figure out all the things my parents didn’t say when I went back home are at the root of it. They had a lot of secrets. Damon likes it because it means I already know when he’s done something underhanded, so he doesn’t have to go through the whole process of lying to cover it up, me finding out eventually, and him having to explain it in a confession without apologizing for it. Matt calls it being ‘Eve’d,’ when I hone in on a weakness and tell the person how to fix it or to just fix it, which I obviously wouldn’t do with an enemy, and he said that Caroline said I have a habit of saying something mean, but then turn it around to make the person feel like it’s one of the nicest things they’ve heard in a while, because it’s something they need to hear. Stefan said something similar once . . . doesn’t mean I don’t also use it to my advantage, and I do sometimes use it to rip people to shreds, particularly Elena, but it's also faulty with her, because I almost never see it when she's being underhanded until it's too late."

"Like you said I do with Kol?" I nodded, and he almost smiled to himself as he said, "And that is how it goes hand-in-hand with the empathy." 

"Yeah." 

"I take it you knew I wouldn’t respond to it well, and yet you did it anyway.” I nodded again, and his eyes narrowed in thought before his gaze flicked over his shoulder in the direction of the games room. “So if I were to ask you why I - “

“I’d say you trashed that room for a number of reasons." His eyebrow arched in challenge, and I mostly thought, here we go. 

"One, Kol, in general, pisses you off when he doesn’t fall in line, and he’s obviously not doing that right now. Two, he called me his ally, and as his brother, you want him to be your ally. Plus, it sort of confirmed what I said earlier in the car, which you could easily brush off as me babbling the truth as I see it to stall for time, but hearing him say that made it less my naive truth and just ‘the’ truth. Three, you got even more territorial after what I said when the call was over, because how dare I, an outsider, presume to call you and Kol out on your issues when you’re aware of them on some level but choose to ignore them until you can't. Four, Kol isn’t here, but I am, so you decided to punish me by taking away the thing you gave me for returning Kol to you, and you definitely wanted me to react to it in some way . . . anger to justify whatever you would have done in response to it, cowering in fear, sadness, anything that would say that you had won, but I wouldn’t submit, and that is why you charged me and then picked me up."

"You’ve picked me up 3 times now, the first was when I was blatantly disrespectful the first time I saw you after I attacked your home, but you got over that fast enough because you then got angry that I was already hurt; earlier you did it when I didn’t do what you told me to do, and you threw me, because I said I had everything under control, which completely undermined you; and not even 10 minutes later, you felt the need to make your point again. You do it because your lizard wolf brain wants to impress upon me that you are the Alpha.” 

“Yes, well . . . “ The flicker of a smile, and he said, “It doesn’t appear to be getting through.”

“Oh, yeah, no, that you’re trying to make me think you’re the Alpha is getting through loud and clear.” 

If he was going to tell me that next time maybe he should trying biting me, which was only half a step away from him actually biting me the next time, then that would’ve been the time to do it. It might've disappointed me if he had, but I was waiting for it or something along those lines, because despite how much I knew about him, he was still unpredictable. With a slight smirk at my gall, he turned to start heading down the hall again. “Quit while you’re ahead, Little Ghost. I’d much rather discuss proposals on how to deal with this current Kol situation since we’re momentarily on the same team. I’m sure you already have more than one.”

Hm. He hadn't gone there . . . I suppose that when he was throwing me or shoving me into walls, he made sure I wasn't hurt by it, or I would have been hurt every time. I certainly had been when other vampires had done those same things to me. The fact that I hadn’t been hurt by him must only be because he didn’t want to hurt me even when he was in something of a rage, but there was a reason I didn't trust him any more than I did Katherine, and I could never lose sight of it. 

I was sure there were a lot of things he did that he didn’t necessarily want to do, and it was only earlier tonight that his paranoid mind had doped me up to make sure I wasn’t lying about not wanting the cure to use on him. On the other hand, there were far more unpleasant ways for him to have gotten the truth out of me, like bleeding me of vervain, but he hadn't. 

He didn't particularly make this whole not trusting him thing very easy sometimes, did he? Maybe I should bump him up a spot above Katherine, because it was pretty easy not to trust her, but that's all the further up the ranks that he was moving. Interrupting my own musings, I glanced up at him over my shoulder. “I have about 3. Pretty sure you won’t like 2, but I’m going to say them anyway.”


	55. The Worst Girlfriend in the World

I left Klaus’s house in search of Damon just before dawn, so I ultimately ended up being right about Klaus letting me go early. Not really sure why he bothered saying we’d discuss possible solutions to this Kol situation though. The only solution he seemed to want to hear was me leaving Kol to him and staying as far away from his brother as possible. There might be some potential there in persuading him to agree with me taking Jeremy out of town to keep him away from Kol if he couldn’t find Kol, but it was almost non-existent potential. It was still more than he was willing to listen on anything else to do with the cure and Silas, so I’d take it anyway. 

Since I couldn’t be out in the sun for very long at all these days and hadn’t had a place to really start my investigation that didn’t include asking someone to drive me all the way back to that bar near the lake house, I’d decided to set a trap for Damon in Mystic Falls. I’d had Damon drink some vervain before we went to that bar because of Klaus, but Kol would’ve tested Damon to make sure he was free of vervain, and if he was as sadistic as his older brother, the way Alice said, then there were a whole host of things he could’ve told Damon to do that Damon would’ve struggled to do willingly. There were also just as many things that he could’ve done to drain Damon of the vervain if he suspected Damon had any in his system, so I didn’t really know what I was going to get when I did find Damon, but I did know that if he was compelled, then it’d be to kill Jeremy. That made my cousin the ideal bait.

Okay, technically, he wasn’t bait. He was still on the move with Alice. I’d called them, and from the sounds of it, they’d had a fairly eventful night thanks to Damon. To be honest, Damon, couldn’t care less about Silas or stopping the dead monster apocalypse. He just wanted to see being on a team with me through, so if that was my current cause, he was all for being a part of it, but he wasn’t a true believer in it, and he didn’t give a damn about sticking to the plan if it meant Klaus was going to take me away from him again. 

It’s like I always said. He could do the right thing. It just needed to line up with what he wanted for himself, and that’s what made him the anti-hero that I loved, so I wasn’t too surprised about it or upset with him for behaving, like one. I might have been annoyed if I hadn’t thought him being a bit of a devil was on the cards, because I wouldn’t have prepared for it, and Jeremy might have completed a good portion of his tattoo in one night, but as it was, I mostly found it amusing that both Klaus and I knew what Damon was going to do and nobody else apparently had. 

Unfortunately, that meant that Jeremy’s trust in one of his instructors had been shaken, and not only that, but I too was expecting some judgmental looks and a bad attitude the next time I saw him for sending Kol there to kill all the baby vampires despite the valiant attempt Jeremy had made not to kill them. What can I say? This whole Silas situation seemed to be really bringing out the utilitarian in me, because a few baby vampire lives versus the lives that would be lost if Silas got out seemed like the least bad option, and I wasn’t sorry about it at all. I’d tried to do the right thing with Plan A, but it hadn’t worked out, so I’d moved on to Plan B, which seemed to be the story of my life these days, and someday soon, I think I might just go back to skipping Plan A and simply do what was required to save myself the aggravation. 

I mean, it’s not like I hadn’t told Jeremy that there was a possibility that Damon and I were gonna have to kill the vampires anyway, but whatever, he could snark away in the background of my call to Alice all he wanted. It didn’t change that I’d done what needed to be done, and apparently, so had Alice. With the strong stance Jeremy had taken on not killing the baby vampires, who had started completing their transitions by that point, and Damon’s increasing frustration, she’d finally let that mind of hers take her down darkened paths she’d rather ignore, saw where the situation was headed, and had just picked up both Jeremy and Matt and whisked them away from the bar before Damon could do anything about it. 

I’d driven us to the bar, and my keys were still in my pocket, but Matt’s truck was at the lake house, so she ran them all the way there, and that’s where Damon caught up with them again. He’d been invited into the house, so he obviously got in there all stealth like, and the first thing he did was snap Alice’s neck, which chased Matt and Jeremy back outside. They ran around in the woods trying to stay one step ahead of Damon and dodging baby vampires that must’ve followed Damon and who were experiencing the thrill of the hunt for the first time. When Damon did eventually find Jeremy, he captured a baby vampire before it could chase Matt up a tree and held onto it to make getting started on killing them easier for Jeremy, but when Jeremy made it clear he still wasn’t going to kill it, Damon let the baby vampire go knowing that Jeremy would have to kill it if it attacked him. Just before it got to my cousin, Kol, already a bloody mess from other baby vampires he must’ve had fun chasing down in the woods, whooshed onto the scene and knocked the baby vampire’s head off. Damon tried to slow Kol down, so Jeremy could get away, and in a karmic twist, Kol snapped Damon’s neck before taking off with my sketchy boyfriend to do whatever it was that even sketchier and more homicidal Original vampires did. 

Damon wouldn’t be released until Kol was sure he would leave wherever they were ready to kill Jeremy, so I had some time to build a safety net with which to catch Damon. Step one was finding out if Kol still had Damon by asking Jeremy to ask Alec, and yeah, Kol still had Damon. Step two was making sure that Matt, Jeremy, and Alice kept their phones off, stayed on the move, and headed in the opposite direction of Mystic Falls. Jeremy didn’t have to be here to lure Damon back to town. Damon only had to believe he was. 

Step three was making sure anyone Damon might go to in town thought Jeremy was on his way to where I was. I couldn’t just tell them my plan, especially Elena, because if I did, and Damon didn’t believe her when he asked her where Jeremy was, then he could use that sire bond for the truth, and she’d screw up my plan. I just told her that I’d gotten away from Klaus and was waiting for Jeremy in the tunnels under the Grill, so he and I could hide out somewhere dark until tonight because of my aversion to sunlight and then we would be leaving town until this whole mess was over. If Kol held onto Damon for much longer, then my story provided a reason for Damon to go to the tunnels until at least through sunset. Any later than that, and I’d have re-think this, or he’d think we’d already left and wouldn't come here to look for us, because it'd be a waste of his time. 

I knew Elena would tell Stefan, so that covered the story getting to Damon if he went home. I told Liz essentially the same thing I’d told Elena. Damon saw her as a friend and might go to her to get her to put an APB out on anyone matching Jeremy’s description, and his reason for having her do it would probably be something, like Kol wanted Jeremy dead and now Jeremy was in the wind so Damon needed help finding him before Kol did. If that happened, then she could just direct him to the tunnels. I didn’t want to lie to Caroline, so I didn’t call her, because I didn’t think that there was any reason for Damon to go to her if he still thought I was with Klaus, and when he found out I wasn’t from one of the others, then he’d just go to the tunnels instead of going to Caroline. Damon could go to Bonnie to have her use a locator spell on Jeremy though, so I left a message for her not to do that if she saw him, not to kill Damon, and if she knocked him out to make sure he stayed that way and leave a message on my phone, because I’d be checking it periodically. To save me from making another call, I might’ve also told her to keep an eye out for Kol. That should just about cover step three. 

Step four was being exactly where I told them all I’d be. It was dark, which was a bonus for me, and I really couldn’t use a vervain dart on Damon in public. When he’d been tranquilized, I should be able to just call Elena to tell her to drive around to the nearest non-public entrance of the tunnels, so we could load him into her car and take him home without anyone seeing. I planned on smoothing over any hard feelings she might have about the misleading information on her brother’s whereabouts on the drive, and everything should be fine. 

I’d gotten here shortly after dawn, and it’s where I’d stayed all day. The longer I waited, the more time I had to think, and the more I thought, the more concerned I was about Damon. Pretty sure the sun had gone down again or would be soon. He should’ve gotten here by now. Might have to start re-thinking my plan. I could steal my sister’s car, since mine wasn't here, and then call her to tell her that I was at a rest stop with Jeremy outside of town. Digging my phone out of my pocket, I turned it back on to see if I had anything from Bonnie. Nothing from her, but I did have a text from Damon that’d been sent not even 7 minutes earlier. _Stay where you are. I’m on my way._

He'd either gone to one of the people I’d called or his brother, and now I was considering the possibility that maybe Klaus had been right about Kol not thinking we were even. Maybe Damon had been compelled to do something to me as well. He hadn’t exactly said anything about Jeremy, but then he was smart, and he wouldn’t exactly go around telling anyone, me included, that Jeremy was his target. There was really only one way to find out for sure how he was, and that was to see him. At least he wasn’t dead, so that was something. Anything else could be fixed. 

Turning off my phone again, I sat in wait, and it was maybe another 5 minutes before I saw some light breech the darkness around the corner as he removed the temporary barrier that Matt had used to cover the hole in the Grill’s back room after the Connor debacle. Damon might be able to see in the dark better than I could, but he couldn’t see in the pitch dark, which was where I was down a side tunnel. I was quite far down it, so he couldn’t see me even when he was standing right at the end of my tunnel. Looking down the tunnel that was perpendicular to mine, he whisper shouted, “Eve?” looked worried for few seconds, and then looked confused when he heard my echoed voice respond, “Feel an overwhelming urge to kill me?” The acoustics in these tunnels was fantastic in some places. Sound bounced around and made it difficult to pinpoint where it had originated if you had an entire day to find the right place to go.

“Can we stop with the creepy theatrics? It’s me.” He really had no idea where I was in that given second, and under any other circumstances, I would’ve gotten a kick out of creeping my vampire boyfriend out the way any other person might enjoy jumping out and scaring their perspective partner, but in those circumstances, I was mainly thinking about where to shoot him. 

Complaining about me making this difficult, Damon grabbed his phone to turn on the light. Thankfully, Klaus had returned my confiscated weapons when I left this morning. As the light from Damon’s phone finally landed on my legs, if not the rest of my body that was somewhat concealed by the uneven tunnel walls, I stayed seated with my back against the wall and kept the dart gun on the ground next to me, so he couldn’t see it from where he was. “I know it’s you, and I also know that if he compelled you, you wouldn’t remember him doing it, so are you feeling an urge to kill me right now?”

“Even if I did, I’d just stake myself to keep from doing it.”

Yeah, I suppose he would, and I was grateful that he hadn’t. He finally got to within a few feet of being able to see all of me, and with a nod of understanding, I subtly grabbed the dart gun next to me saying, “Then, it’s just Jeremy,” before casually lifting it and pulling the trigger when he stepped into view.

It wasn’t a particularly easy angle to hit my target from given that I had to aim from down by my thigh, but he wasn’t exactly looking for it because he was more focused on my strange behavior than anything else. The dart hit him just above the knee in a place where he would’ve had to be just a little bit faster to stop it than he would have if it’d been anywhere near his torso. “Damn it, Eve . . . “ Reaching for the side of the tunnel to support his weight, his leg buckled out form under him, and he went down hard with a frustrated, “No!” 

Getting up to stand over him, I shook my head in sympathy, and even though I knew he couldn’t hear me, I felt the need to say, “I’m not knocking you out, so I can leave without you. It was just a cover to get you here.” Crouching down to watch him, I added, “I’ll call Elena. We’ll get you home, and then we’ll see where we go from there.”

It turns out that where we went from there was directly down to the basement to put him in the cell. The slimy professor toad that was down there already got his first proper glimpse of me, and he might still not be saying anything else other ‘Silas,’ but I knew fear when I saw it on a person, and he had it, which meant he did have memories back at just the sight of me. He just wasn’t saying which memories those were. Whether or not he could or if this was all part of an act, I didn’t know, but either way, I was kicking him out of the house, because I needed the cell to keep Damon safe – from himself, from Jeremy, from Kol, and Klaus - and that took priority over having somewhere to put the Snake. Elena, who along with Bonnie, had mostly been the ones taking care of him since Damon and I had been at the lake house, said she’d find somewhere to put him, and that was that. 

When Damon did wake up, I had his head in my lap to make it a bit more comfortable for him. He inhaled deeply through his nose just before his eyes popped open. He looked a little groggy, like he sometimes did in the early mornings, but then everything came flooding back to him, and his eyes narrowed. “You shot me.”

“Yep.”

My fingers went to his hair and began to gently massage his scalp as a peace offering, a way to ease some of the worry his last moments of consciousness must’ve held for him, and his eyes fluttered briefly closed before they opened again looking much more relaxed as he stared up at me. “You’re still here.”

“I only said I wouldn’t be to lure you there.”

Watching me, he gave the faintest of smirks before subtly shaking his head. “I’m not compelled.”

“You wouldn’t know – “

“Oh, I know. Believe me, I remember every second, but it looks like you force feeding me vervain before every interaction I have with Klaus finally paid off . . . If Kol said, ‘stake yourself,’ I did it, and if I had bled it all out, I was planning to top it up with some from one of the darts you gave me . . . I had no intention of giving Kol what he wants. I hate that guy.”

“I sent him there.”

“I was being a dick and tried to make Jeremy kill those vampires, which put us on opposite teams for half the night, so I really should’ve expected it.” 

“Not sure you should have. It was the nuclear option, and I had no idea what the blast radius for it would be when I initiated it.”

“Well, you are the worst girlfriend in the world, so . . . “ 

I exhaled a laugh. “Then I’m surprised you didn’t have any faith that I’d manage to annoy Klaus enough to make him let me go.”

“To be fair, I don’t find you that annoying.” His smile slowly fell before he added, “And he didn’t let you go last time.”

“He didn’t exactly take me far this time. We went to his house, and it was like a mini-retreat. I was actually looking forward to the breakfast I was supposed to have in bed this morning, but Kol worked faster than I expected.”

I got a faint frown in response to the breakfast in bed comment, and I was pretty sure that meant that he’d be making me some in the near future, but he got distracted as an idea struck him. “If they’re focused on one another, I say leave them to it and stay as far away from both of them as possible.”

“Except Kol isn’t just focused on Klaus. Keeping Silas locked up wherever he is has been a pet project of his for centuries, so he knows there are three areas where he can head this thing off. The sword, the tattoo, and the witch, who can perform the spell. His first thought was to go for the sword, but I didn’t realize until his hallucinations set in how afraid he actually is of the daggers, so even though getting rid of the sword seems like the most straight forward thing to do, it means facing his brother and those daggers, and that will make it more difficult for him to stick with finding the sword instead of moving on to an easier target for him in Jeremy. Klaus wouldn’t agree to letting us get Jeremy out of town without completing that tattoo if he didn’t have a reason to do it, and the more Kol does to wind him up, the more likely he will be to agree to it. With Jeremy gone, it’ll put Kol’s focus on Bonnie or the sword, and if Kol goes near Bonnie, he’ll wish he hadn’t, so whether he wants to do it or not, he’ll have to go back to focusing on the sword, which he will do, because he’s committed to keeping Silas imprisoned. If Klaus daggers him, I’ll just un-dagger him and set him loose again until we get the sword and melt the damn thing down.”

“Well, that must be Plan B, because I know Plan A was for Kol to find the sword so it wouldn’t matter how many vampires Jeremy killed, and then take Jeremy hunting.”

It wasn't a million miles away from Plan A. It was just switching it around to take Jeremy out of town first, and it being necessary for Kol scare everyone about Jeremy's well-being, so that was possible. “I knew when I first talked to Kol that him going after Jeremy and Bonnie were possibilities, particularly when I spelled out their roles in all of this. Obviously, I was going to plan for that.”

“That’s still pretty dark, Evie.”

Was it though? I knew that if my plans failed, then I would have put Jeremy and Bonnie directly in Kol’s line of fire, but it’s not like I’d specifically given him their names. Of course I’d known that he’d probably figure those out, but deals with devils were never without risk, and he’d needed to know how dire the situation was. All it meant was that if I wasn’t on top form, then somebody could die, so I was going to be on top form. “Not unless I let him kill them, which I’m not going to do . . . and I’m actually thinking that I need to start paying more attention to Elena. Would it be wrong if – “

“If you have to specifically ask me that, then you know it is by a normal person’s standard.”

“Probably. Could use my cliff buddy’s perspective though. He’s the one I don’t want to let down.” 

Sitting up to look at me, his forehead furrowed as he said, “No matter what you do, you’ll never let me down. I don't care what you do as long as you don't, but if you do something that's going to torture you with guilt, then I’m the one who has let you down.”

“What if we had you use the sire bond to make Elena back off on the cure?”

Looking to the side, he considered it before his eyes flicked back to mine. “Is that the lightest shade we can go?” 

He for sure knew what he was doing with the question itself, because he was using my own philosophy to make me think it through, but him saying, ‘we,’ and not ‘you’ is what 100% sold me on the answer, and it’s because he hadn’t intended for that one little word to be manipulative. I hadn’t thought about it, but he’d be involved, because he’s the one who would have to do it, and that changed everything. If he did bad things of his own accord, fine, but if I had him do bad things on my behalf? That was totally different. I didn’t want to use him in that way, and I’m fairly certain that I wasn’t supposed to shove him towards the edge of our little cliff. 

Getting him to use the sire bond was definitely the easiest and surest way of getting Elena to stand down, but I had a thing about having my free will taken away, which is why I was hesitant about it, and nobody could find out about it, because if they did, there would be outrage and more of a concerted effort in trying to get the cure for her. If it was outrage inducing, and I wouldn't want it done to me, then more thought should be put into it. Were there other methods I could try first, like nagging her into compliance the way she nagged me? Yeah, I could probably put a bit more effort in on that tactic. “Not yet. Let’s call it Plan L as in last resort.”

Watching me, he nodded, but his mind was on something else. “I wanna go back to this thing with Kol.” 

“Okay.”

“I get how important this is to you, and while I still contend that me killing that creepy professor would’ve been a lighter shade of grey than you putting him into a rotting corpse, pulling out his heart as slowly as possible, scrambling his brain, and ruining his life forever. You were at least trying to give him a shot at redemption, but with Klaus getting more involved, and now Kol being brought into it . . . I have to ask. With everything else you’ve thought out, did it occur to you that if all else fails, Kol might be the fail safe you need to do _whatever_ is necessary if you can’t do it yourself?” 

Hm. “You mean kill Jeremy or Bonnie?” He nodded, and I found it incredibly endearing that he was taking the time to do a morality check-in with me before I completely lost the run of myself. I could see why he’d think that might be something floating around in the back of my mind. 

I’d let people die in the past for the greater good. Hell, I even did it last night with those baby vampires, and why should it be any different for people I knew? The same treatment across the board would be the fair thing to do, but Jeremy was my responsibility now, and he was family. He was also just about as close to an innocent in all of this as you could get. To sacrifice him would be far worse than being a hypocrite, and as for Bonnie, I genuinely believed that she could do some serious damage to Kol even though she shouldn’t be using Expression at all. 

As long as she persisted in practicing Expression, then the same thing that made her a target was what would protect her, and if Elena was doing what she was supposed to do, then Bonnie should be looking into the contacts that Imelda had given her to help her stop using Expression. If she stopped, she’d no longer be a target for Kol. That made Jeremy my main concern. “With or without Expression, Bonnie will be fine."

"And Jeremy?"

"I won't let Kol kill him, but I also refuse to let them raise Silas. I can do both.”

"What if you can't?"

"I will."

"Eve - "

"I know what you're saying, Damon. I do. There are so many chaotic actors in play now that it's hard to predict what any of them will do, so how can I say that for sure, but as of right now, even if Jeremy were to complete the tattoo, I would see it as an opportunity for Kol to steal the sword when Klaus finally brings it out of hiding to use as a key for the map. At that point, there will be no need for anyone to go after Jeremy."

"In an ideal world, that might be a worst case scenario, but it's not an ideal world, and you have me wondering how far you're willing to go to keep this Silas thing from happening."

"Well, since none of us know the future, I'd say if I do something wrong for the right reasons . . . I suppose it's safe to say I could live with being the same level of anti-villain who put the professor in a rotting corpse."

The seriousness with which I had taken his question made him pause before he snorted. Brushing my hair back behind my ear, his smile slowly fell before he asked, “Are you getting in over your head here?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Not yet . . . but thanks for asking instead of assuming you need to throw me in the trunk and take me to New York.” 

“Speaking of which, I brought your car back. Told you giving me a spare key would come in handy.”

“Suppose it is better than it being left behind at what must be a crime scene by now.”

“Or me hot-wiring it.”

“Or you pushing it into the lake to hide it . . . Thanks.”

Giving me a soft smile, he leaned forward to touch his lips to mine before pulling back a minute later to say, “We should get out of here.”

“Yeah, not happening.” He leaned back to look at me, and I laughed at the expression on his face. “Damon, I’m not letting you out of here until I’m sure you weren’t compelled to terminate Jeremy.”

Biting his bottom lip in thought, his eyes narrowed before he said, “There’d better be an ‘And,’ coming, because I’m gonna need something better than that if you really plan on keeping me down here.”

“And I’ll stay in here with you until he gets here. Shouldn’t be too long now. If you pass the test, you’re free to go.”

“And . . . “

I laughed again, and said, “And then you will be rewarded for outsmarting an Original, possibly two since Klaus let me go to find you.” 

He leaned in to start collecting on that reward a little early but then stopped half-way to me. “Wait. Is Klaus gonna want you back if he knows I’m not compelled?”

“Probably not.”

“But he might think it’s something you planned?” Actually, he might. Catching my hesitation, Damon leaned back a little. “Then, I think you’re gonna have to sacrifice your Knight, and I’m gonna have to stay down here until you do.” 

“I don’t think Klaus will retaliate if he thinks I’m responsible for you tricking his brother. He’d just think it was part of the game.”

“It’s a game in name only, and you know it. He’s only calling it that, so he can try to keep himself from getting too pissed off with you for whatever you do and vice versa, and clearly there are no rules. He can take you back again to keep you from playing against him if he thinks you’re getting too far out in front of him.” Sitting back, he stubbornly shook his head. “I’m not letting that happen.”

“You’re seriously going to stay down here until Kol is daggered so you can say that the compulsion is gone?”

“I think it’s what I have to do.” For more than one reason, right? He didn’t like Kol for obvious reasons, so he didn’t want Kol on any team that included me, and if him staying down here made me dagger Kol a little faster, then that worked for him, because he hated Kol that much. Then there was what he was actually saying about Klaus. His worry that Klaus would take off with me again the way he had over the summer was very real, because I probably meant even more to him now, and that'd really left a mark. 

“Well, I don’t. It’d mean losing my only two allies. Besides, Kol really is scared of those daggers. He would see it as a massive betrayal if I went at him with one, and then he would definitely come looking for revenge on me some day.”

“You like him too, don’t you?” I shrugged a shoulder, and Damon rolled his eyes. “If it means he might come after you, then have Klaus or Rebekah do it. Both of them can without it killing them, and they can get close enough to him for it to work. Then, you can have your best ally back, and we’ll do everything else together.”

Or I could keep both my allies for just a little bit longer. “What if for now, everyone thinks you’re in here, but I give you a coat hanger to get the latch open, so you can really sneak out whenever you want to spy or for back up or whatever . . . You can be the guy in charge of our covert operations.”

“While you’re out front and the face of them?” 

“Basically.”

“Does it mean we can have clandestine meetings in your room?” 

“If that’s where the operations lead, then I don’t see why not.”

Exhaling a laugh, he leaned into me again saying, “Then I’m definitely in.”


	56. Stop Lying

Jogging up the steps to Elena’s house, the little pep talk I’d gotten from Alice before I got out of the car about not jumping to conclusions was quickly forgotten, and I had to make myself take a quick breath to help me remain calm before knocking. The door swung open almost too soon for me to make sure I was as collected as I would’ve liked to be, but I just about made it. “Oh, um . . . hi. Jeremy’s still in bed, but even after he wakes up, I don’t think he’ll be leaving this house for a while, so he won’t be training today.”

And I was already struggling not to get annoyed by the first irritation of my visit, because all that meant was, 'You won't be training Jeremy at all anymore.' With a quick nod, I pointed my thumb over my shoulder in the direction of my car. “Actually, Alice and I were planning to go look at a car she found, and I know you said you wanted to come with us, so . . . “

She seemed torn. “Right now?”

It was really early. I’d been exhausted after an eventful couple of days, so I’d forced myself to try and sleep, but I'd been too annoyed to sleep properly. I'd only managed to stay in bed until the time I’d normally get up at the lake house, and here I was. “Yep.” 

“I’d like to go, but now’s not a very good time.” Figured as much. As an awkward afterthought, she added, “Maybe if she doesn’t like this one, I can go with you on the next one?”

Briefly biting the inside of my cheek, I nodded. “I think this one is going to be a winner. She’s really put her research in on it. I’m thinking it’ll probably be love at first sight.” 

“Oh . . . well, if you’re sure she’s going to get it, then maybe you could wait until we can all go together?”

“Nah, I don’t think I should make her wait any more on it. Besides, we’re going to stop by Rebekah’s on the way out of town, and the sooner I get that done, the better.”

Her eyebrows arched in interest, and she took half a step forward. “Why is that?”

No indignation at the mention of Rebekah. Just interest in what business I might have with the Original, and really, all that did was confirm my suspicions more. “Somebody broke into my room, and I want to get out ahead of it before it becomes a problem.”

“Well, how do you know someone broke into your room?”

Goddamn it! I knew it was Elena. It was the same slightly higher pitched voice she’d used with Elijah at his mother’s ball. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I flicked to the pictures and held one up for her to see saying, “See this scrape on the floor . . . my bed was moved. Someone tried to put it back. They just didn’t quite get it right.” Flipping to the next picture, I showed it to her saying, “And sometimes, the dust I leave around the place is strategic. Like this dust here on the handle of my weapons cabinet has been nearly wiped off.” I opened the doors by grabbing underneath the handle, so that wouldn’t happen, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “It’s low tech, but it works.” You just had to be methodical about it.

Elena’s eyes briefly scanned the photo before her eyes drifted to my face, and she finally saw that I knew full well who was responsible, so that really made this little visit of mine an interrogation. Her shoulders fell, but rather than confess, she crossed her arms over her chest and tried, “If someone did search your room, I wonder what they were looking for.”

Given everything that’d been ignored in what was searched, I’d say it had to be one of two things, a dagger, the anti-magic serum, or the white oak stake, and none of those were in my room. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

“Wait, you think – “

“Elena, stop. I know it was you.”

Again she slumped before saying, “It’s not like I can get into your room, so I don’t know why you’d think it was me.“

It was true she couldn’t get in my room. Each of the parts of the Salvatore house that’d been signed over to me had been signed over as separate lease agreements, so I could allow someone into my piano room and not my room, which is what I’d done with her the night of my convention. That didn’t mean she wasn’t the mastermind behind it. 

“I’m well aware you haven’t been invited into my room, so who did you direct from the threshold? It wasn’t Caroline. Could’ve been Bonnie or Jeremy, but I’m thinking it was Matt.” A subtle shift in her expression, and I had my answer, another culprit to knock down a place on my list of trust. “Yeah, it was him all right . . . Bet it was while Jeremy and Alice were down with Damon and I in the cellar, because you didn’t bring the professor directly here last night the way you led me to believe you were going to do. Instead, you hung around at the boarding house, and before you deny it, Alice saw your car. Now, she swears up and down that she didn't see you or hear you in the house, so I think you texted Matt just before they got there and told him meet you at my room. Then to make the search go faster, you went around to my back window where you’d have a better view of the entire room while you told him where to look . . . or do I need to show you a picture of the footprints that have a striking resemblance to mine too?” 

I didn't have a picture of footprints outside my back window, because there weren't any since it hadn't rained, but she didn't need to know that. I got a pout, and a peevish one at that. I arched an eyebrow in expectation of an answer, and finally, she let her arms drop as she huffed out a sigh. “All right, fine. Kol, is trying to kill Jeremy. What do you expect me to do?”

“I expect you to give me back the professor that you so kindly volunteered to take in last night for starters.”

“Why?”

“Because you suggested it, and it wasn’t for anything good, was it?”

“I – I don’t know – “

The overly casual way in which I said, “Stop, lying,” made her do just that, and my eyes flitted to the edges of the door frame, as I asked, “You know something I’ve wanted to see since the first time I removed a dagger from Elijah?” I focused on her to answer my own question. “What it looks like to watch an Original demolish a house . . . Give him back, or I’m gonna tell Kol just how many memories the guy has . . . That should make him a treasure map to Silas again pretty soon. I mean he may not be able to say where to go, but I bet he can write it, or point to it on a map, huh?” 

She and Bonnie had been taking care of the professor while we were away. I'd thought that given everything Elena and I had gone through to limit the professor as a threat, that would be a safe enough option, but I suppose I should have remembered that she'd helped me out to make the intervention she'd sabotaged up to me and to help Bonnie, not erase the guy's knowledge of where Silas and cure were. They must’ve found some way to get him to communicate with him in a way they could understand over the last few days - not a problem in and of itself as long as they kept away from the no-go areas of Silas and the cure, but at the first perceived threat to Jeremy, Elena had decided to put the professor back in play, which made the sword inconsequential to finding the cure, and that actually put Jeremy in more danger. 

He would still need to complete the tattoo for the spell to unlock Silas’s cage if the cure was with Silas, or nobody would be able to get to it even with the professor leading the way, so Kol’s focus would shift entirely off of the inanimate sword and onto living people, namely the professor, Jeremy, or Bonnie. Of the three, Jeremy or Bonnie would still be an issue with or without the professor, so the most efficient option for Kol would be to primarily focus on one of them to cover all eventualities, but his urgency to kill one if they had a direct path to the cure with the professor would be greater, and of the two, Jeremy was the easier target. 

Then there was Klaus. He would no longer be a vital part of finding the cure if the sword was useless, and being a part of finding the cure is something he wanted because he liked control, which meant that in order to stay relevant without the sword, there was a greater likelihood of him taking Jeremy so he could make him kill vampires somewhere else. He wouldn't do that as long as Kol was around, because it'd look too much like he was running from his brother, and he'd never do that, so Kol being around and a nuisance prevented Klaus from absconding with Jeremy and so did the focus being on the sword. Needless to say, she couldn't dagger Kol the way she seemed to want to do if she wanted to keep Klaus in check, and I needed the professor gone so my plan, the much more peaceful plan, could get back on track.

“He isn’t here.” I waited for her to clarify that, and eventually, she sighed, “Bonnie and I looked into it while you were away, and we found out where he lived, so I took him home. You never said we’d be keeping him locked up indefinitely.”

Bullshit. She knew exactly what she was doing. “No, but I do seem to remember saying that if he was taken home, I was going to kill him.” 

What? Too nonchalant? Giving me a look of disgust, she asked, “What is wrong with you?”

“Nothing, except that you’re going to get the very brother you’re trying to save killed or release an immortal witch that should stay where he is or both, because you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Like you’re doing such a great job yourself? You’re the one who put a target on my brother’s back in the first place!”

Oh, so now she wanted to get upset about that. “Temporarily. I’m going to remove it, and it’ll stay off of him.”

“By taking him out of town? That’s what you’re thinking isn’t it?”

Better me than Klaus. “It’s not a million miles away from him training at the lake house. He just won’t be stationary.”

“And I won’t see him again, right?”

Rolling my eyes, I answered, “Until this is over, he needs to be out of town. I’d prefer if it was with you to be honest, because I have things here to do, but you couldn’t even mind the professor without undoing everything I did to eliminate him from the equation, so why would I think you’d keep Jeremy from completing that tattoo?”

Her mouth drew into a straight line, and she inhaled deeply through her nose, but she didn’t fall for the professor bait and admit or deny that’s what she’d done. “When you say you have things to do, are you talking about things, like your game with Klaus?”

She’d heard about that, had she? “It’s with Silas, actually.”

“Yeah, well, whoever you think you’re playing, I saw how well it’s going for you the other night.” 

She couldn’t have seriously bought Klaus’s act, could she? “Uh, did you, because I’ve got this Klaus thing sorted.”

“I’m not willing to take any chances, Eve. He’s my brother.”

“And I am your sister, and I am telling you that I will not let anything happen to him, but you need to stop with this cure nonsense, because you getting involved is going to screw everything up.”

“How?”

“I’ll have to stop focusing on them to stop you.” Taking a slow breath to stay calm, I think I did a decent job of it before saying, “Look, trust works both ways. If you want me to trust you, then you have also got to trust me to find a way out of this without it killing Jeremy, destroying the world, and with a minimum loss of life.”

“And what about those people that Klaus turned and Kol killed? Do they not count?”

“It wasn’t ideal, but Klaus played his hand, and Kol did what had to be done.”

“I talked to Jeremy. Kol did that after you told him where to go. You knew he – “

“Yep. In fact, I think I said, ‘kill the baby vampires before Jeremy can grow that tattoo.’”

“And you’re okay with that?!”

“It’s better than the alternative.”

“But they didn’t do anything wrong. They were human not even 48 hours ago.”

“Then they became Damon’s way of getting me back, so they were eliminated as leverage, and you can look at me like that all you want. It doesn’t change that if Silas gets out, then there are going to be a whole lot more people killed than that, and it doesn’t change that if Klaus gets what he wants too soon, he’ll kill everyone involved the night they trapped him in Rebekah’s body, so stop trying to speed that along. He needs to find a reason to like them again . . . I’m thinking Christmas should be - ”

“What are you talking about right now?”

“Christmas. The more human interactions Klaus has with us, the less he will - ”

“Are you kidding me?!”

“No I’m thinking of calling him Saint Nik all night.”

“He just killed Tyler’s Mom, and you want him to come to some kind of Christmas gathering?!”

“Yeah.”

She blinked a couple of times, like that didn’t compute before saying, “Eve, everyone will be dead by Christmas if we don’t give him that cure.”

“Not if he has a reason to hold off until Christmas. His invite does that, because he does like a social occasion, and stop pretending like this all about protecting people by doing what Klaus wants. He’s also the excuse you’re using to justify getting the cure for yourself. You can say it’s so you can him happy by going back to making him his hybrids or to get rid of the sire bond, so Damon and I don’t have to go, or for one of a multitude of other reasons, but what you really want deep down is to not be a vampire.”

“I can accept being a vampire. What I can’t accept is anyone else I care about dying. Either we get the cure and give it to him to make him happy or - “

“Don’t finish that thought.”

“What? Don’t say we could use the cure on Klaus? Why not?”

Huffing out a sigh, I shook my head. Let your paranoia that people are out to get you call the shots long enough, and all the things you do in the meantime will ultimately lead to them doing exactly what you thought they’d do. Klaus really did make his life that much more difficult for himself. “Because he’ll still be the head of your sire line, and then we’ll have to spend every waking second protecting him from all his enemies who will want his head on a stick. While I’d enjoy the challenge - No. None of you listened to me the last time I said it, but he needs to be able to defend himself. It’s even more important now than ever because of all the vampires out there that are no longer compelled by him and who will want revenge.”

That made her pause. “Wait, what if we could use that? Like what if we used them to chase him out of town? We did it before with Mikael.”

“Yeah, and then we’ll have thousands of vampires descending upon Mystic Falls. Again, while I’d enjoy the challenge – No.” 

Pondering it, Elena said, “And I suppose that doesn’t do anything about Kol.”

“Nope.”

“Eve, we have to do something about him.”

“He’s still useful.”

“He is not your friend.”

“I know.” 

“Do you? Because sometimes, it’s hard to tell. You certainly seem to think Klaus is even after all the bad things he’s done.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to describe your friends as useful, so yeah, I do know that Kol is not my friend.” I liked him well enough that he maybe could be some day though. 

“You didn’t answer me about Klaus.”

“I didn’t know you were asking about him.”

“Klaus isn’t your friend either. He isn’t going to not kill anyone just because you ask.”

“What about Katherine?” Elena gave me a blank look, and I said, “He hates her with a passion, and I asked him not to kill her. He said he wouldn’t chase her, but if he saw her, he would kill her . . . that’s essentially him agreeing not to kill her as long as she stays out of his sight, and that may have been what he was already doing, because he was preoccupied with other things at the time, but his intention for continuing to do that changed, which indicates a change of mindset. That’s no small thing.”

“And what did you promise him in return?”

“Nothing. I asked him to do it out of the goodness of his heart.”

“He has no goodness in his heart.”

“Yes, he does. It might require knowing where to look or a microscope to find it, but it’s there.”

“And now I’m finally starting to understand how it was possible for you to want to be in that Sun and Moon Ritual as much as you say you did and for Damon to still be able to trick you out of it despite how smart you are."

I was pretty sure that she was equating the failure of my plans then with my plans now by mocking what I’d said to Klaus the other night about understanding why Kol always managed to trick him, and I’m not sure why, but it sort of had the intended effect, because it definitely knocked me back a bit. “What?”

“Eve, you may not give your trust easily, but when you do, it’s to the wrong people.”

Damon did what was best for me even if it wasn’t what I wanted at the time. “No, I don’t.”

“If you honestly think that anything you say or do can influence Klaus, then, yeah, you do. You can’t rely on whatever goodness you think you’ve found in him to stop him from coming after us if we don’t get the cure or from doing worse than he’s already done if Jeremy doesn’t complete that tattoo.” 

I’d put a lot of time and work in on getting to know Klaus because to survive being around him, it’s what had to be done. That didn’t mean that I blindly trusted the guy. “I’m not some naïve kid, Elena. I know that I can’t rely on his good will to make him do the right thing. That’s why I have a strategy, and sometimes peace requires you to get a little blood on your hands, hence the baby vampire massacre, but my plan that will result in more peace than whatever you’ve got in the works right now, and your plan is screwing up my plan. This needs to be about the sword so it won’t be about Jeremy. Get rid of the professor. Get rid of the sword, and there’s no need for Jeremy to complete the tattoo.” My forehead furrowed as I added, “Do you get that?” 

Inhaling deeply through her nose again, Elena nodded. “Okay. Fine, but you can’t kill Shane.”

“You shouldn’t have worked so hard to help him get his memories back.”

“Well, I couldn’t leave him like that either. Give me your word that you won’t kill him or have Kol kill him, and I’ll give you mine that I’ll do this the way you want.” 

“And I’m supposed to think you’ll live up to that because?”

With a frustrated sigh, she retorted, “I thought trust was supposed to go both ways.”

“Yeah, but you’re acting sketchy as hell right now.”

“I just want to make sure that Jeremy is safe.”

“And so do I.”

“Then promise me that you won’t kill Shane, so I can promise that I’ll go with your plan.”

“All right, fine. The professor – “

“Shane.”

Gritting my teeth, I started again. “Shane needs to disappear, so that’s what I’m going to make him do, but I won’t kill him. You have my word.” Giving me a curt nod, she finally agreed, and I said, “Okay, so let’s discuss an exit strategy for you and Jeremy.”


	57. Girl Chat

Early mornings sure did have their uses sometimes. After leaving Elena’s, I went to the address she’d given me for the professor. He opened the door when I knocked, and despite Liz’s warnings about crossing the thresholds of other peoples' houses, I went ahead and reached across his to grab him by the bathrobe before he could get away from me. I then put him into the backseat of my car where Alice kept an eye on him while I went back to make sure nothing of his could be used by a witch to track him, and had a kidnapping and arson under my belt before breakfast. Guess we’d see how much of this ‘Silas’ only speech of his was an act. We had a 7-hour drive ahead of us to find out.

He didn’t break once. The entire way to Cincinnati all he said was Silas. It's all he said as I pulled up to the mental hospital I'd looked up on my phone too. He said it the entire way into the hospital and then shut up while I told the person on the desk that I knew a qualified person was the only one who could admit him against his will in Ohio, but I didn’t know what else to do with the John Doe I’d found wandering in the streets in his bathrobe. The final test though was when 'Silas' is all he screamed as they dragged him away to evaluate him under a 24-hour hold after hospital staff witnessed the way he attacked this ‘concerned citizen,’ who was just trying to leave a complete stranger somewhere safe, so I guess that settled whether or not ‘Silas’ was definitely all he could say.

That didn’t mean he still wouldn’t be a problem if they ever let him out of there. I would’ve asked Alice to compel them to keep him, but I think the way he was acting would keep him in for a while, and I really didn’t want to get Alice more involved than necessary. I suppose you could say what I had done was a dark shade of grey, but it was my dark shade of grey, not hers. I didn’t want it to burden her. That's why I hadn't even let her come in with us.

As I got back into the driver’s seat of my car, she studied me before asking, “You’re sure that was absolutely necessary?”

“Well, I didn’t kill him, and he needs to deal with losing his family. His grief is unhealthy and drove him to start sacrificing people, so a place like this is probably the best place for him to be.”

“But if he can’t remember his family, how – “ I pulled out a crumpled picture that was covered in dry blood and handed it to her while I started the car. Taking it, she whispered, “Is this his family?”

Checking my mirrors before pulling away from the curb, I answered, “Pretty sure it is . . . I found it in his pocket when I was bringing him to the car this morning, and it was certainly useful in getting him to lunge at me in front of them without them knowing why. He probably knew he needed to find something important when he got back to his house, searched until he got a feeling that he’d found what it was, spent hours trying to remember why they were important until he eventually did, took a shower to wash off the blood he lost while trying to remember, and I got there before he could get back to being a villain carrying out his selfish plans.”

“And you think that was Elena’s intention?”

“I think that him remembering that his interests align with hers would be beneficial to her . . . But as long as he isn’t acting on behalf of Silas to bring them back, it’s not a terrible thing that he remembers them, because now he can get the help he needs in a place nobody is going to look for him. Cincinnati isn’t the worst city or the best. It’s simply smack dab in the middle of mediocre, and it’s not too close to Mystic Falls, which makes it a good place to put him.”

Putting the picture in my glove compartment, she said, “I suppose if it helps him, it’s not the worst solution, and I hate to say it, but we don’t really need to be worrying ourselves over him. Things are starting to get a little out of control over this cure and Silas. You know, it wasn’t always just vampires, witches, and werewolves. Every monster that the net of death has captured in thousands of years would be released too. It’s terrifying . . . Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe it’s just so scary that people can’t allow themselves to believe in it.”

“You do.”

“I can still remember the first time I heard about Silas. I couldn’t sleep for a week, not until Papa told me that good little girls didn’t have worry about Silas, so if I was good, then I would be safe . . . I guess he right. Look at me now, almost 1000 years later, and I’ve been downright wicked, so of course Silas and his beastly minions will finally get me.” I laughed, and she quickly looked at me. “I’m serious.”

“I know you are . . . So I guess it’d be safe to assume that you running off with Jeremy and Matt the other night wasn’t just about trying to keep them safe from Damon.”

“I really don’t want Silas to be let out, Eve. I’ve been trying to stay calm, but it’s all getting too real now.”

“That’s the allure of there being a cure, I guess.”

“It’s Klaus is what it is.”

“And that’s where Kol comes in.”

Taking a long slow breath, she eventually nodded. “I suppose I can see why you wanted to involve him. They’re all selfish, but at least he’s kept up on the teachings of old, and he knows that his life would be decidedly less fun if there was no world for him to ruin piece by piece.”

“Exactly.” She looked out the window, and I almost asked for more information about her past, but knew she wouldn’t tell me. Might as well save us both the aggravation. Instead, I asked something I thought would be a little safer as far as road trip topics went. “If Silas didn’t exist, would you take the cure?”

“I don’t deserve it. Very few vampires do.”

Well, that was an interesting take. “So, you think being a vampire is a curse and unnatural, but you’d stay one as some kind of penance for things you’ve done as one?” 

She nodded, and I smiled to myself. “What?” 

“Nothing.”

“No, it’s something. What – “

She could be so sensitive sometimes. Rolling my eyes, I cut her off before she could really get going. “I just think that thinking of it that way actually means you’d deserve the cure the most - more than Rebekah, more than anyone.” I glanced at her, and she was shaking her head, so I snorted. “I knew you wouldn’t want to hear it, but you’re the one who pushed me to say it. Don’t ask if you don’t want the answer.” 

With an airy sigh, she finally said, “Well, it’s all moot, because Silas does exist, so there’s no point in thinking on it anyway.”

“Are you okay?” She seemed sort of down today.

“I suppose the end of the world is just a lot to think about, and everywhere I look, it seems like I’m surrounded by darkness.”

“You were okay at the lake house.”

“It’s so beautiful there, and it was nice and peaceful. Nobody was fighting beyond what would be considered normal bickering, which was lovely in its own way, because family’s bicker . . . but then that hybrid had to go and ruin it.”

“I mean, you can place the blame on him if you want, but that’s just life, Alice. There are ups and downs, and sometimes the downs come out of nowhere to hit you upside the head, but they go away again. You just have to remember they will. I know I forget that sometimes, so I’m not really one to talk, but they will. Anything in particular you want talk about?” 

Sitting back while she contemplated it, she finally gave me a mischievous smile. “We never did get to have our girl chat.” 

No, I suppose we hadn’t, and the prospect of it had been far more humorous when we’d been talking about having it in front of Damon. “All right, um . . . What do you want to know?“

“Oh, tell me everything. When did you know how you felt about him?” 

That wasn’t too bad. At least she wasn’t asking for explicit details, or at least we didn’t start off with those, but by the time we got to where we were going in West Virginia, she was having issues with the location of my first time with him. “Eve Gilbert, that is scandalous! It's an absolute outrage! In a bathroom at a funeral? Oh, I am going to have words with him the next time I see him. That he would – “

Looking at her over my shoulder, I cut her off. “Alice, I was there too, and it was actually kind of perfect.”

“Well, I fail to see how.” Pondering it, she added, “Although, if you think it was, then there must be a reason, but I fear he may be too filthy for you given your inexperience.” I think she may have been fortunate enough to witness one of the few times I was truly speechless and one of the even rarer times my cheeks went bright red before I simply opened the door of my parked car to go to the farmhouse. “Oh, Eve, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – “

“It’s fine.” 

Catching up to me, she quickly said, “No, I really am. I – “

I stopped to look up at her, and a thought occurred to me. With a devilish smirk, I said, “If you promise not to say anything to him, I’ll fill you in on something that I know will make you feel better about it.”

“You deserve better, and he should know that.” When I didn’t budge on my position, she sighed, “Okay, fine. What is it?” 

“I was loaded up with vervain the way I always am.” She looked confused until I arched my eyebrow, and added, “And with it being my first time and all . . . ”

Her hand flew to her mouth as she gasped, and a second later, she doubled over in laughter. It was loud enough to draw the attention of the farmhouse’s occupant, who opened the screen door to see what we were doing there. I waved to let him know we’d be a second, as she cackled, “Oh, it serves him right.” It was another 30 seconds before she got enough control of herself to stand upright, and even then she was still giggling away.

“I’d say you’d like the story of our first date though.”

“You’ll tell me on the way home?” 

“If this car doesn’t work out, I will. If it does, then you’ll be driving it back, and I’ll tell you when we get home.” 

She breathed out few a couple more laughs before noticing the man who was watching us and nodded, “Okay . . . Thanks for that. It’s exactly what I needed.”

“Well, thanks for being on my team and doing what you did with Matt and Jeremy . . . Now, let’s go see about your car.”

The man selling the car seemed like a good enough guy. He was kitted out with faded jeans, a red and white plaid shirt, and a beat up baseball cap. He was older, and the interaction with us was probably the first he’d had all day, so he was enjoying the company. He clearly saw these negotiations as a bit of friendly banter. Eyeing up Alice, he threw out, “2500,” and I almost laughed.

This car was worth nowhere near 2500. Alice glanced down at me over her shoulder. I had my arms crossed over my chest and put up 3 fingers on my upper arm closest to her to signal what her counter offer should be. Turning back to the man, she said, “3 dollars,” and I almost laughed again but covered it with a cough saying, “300.” Without missing a beat, she said, “300 dollars,” and the man grinned before glancing at me. Yeah, I was coaching her, but she was the one he was dealing with right now, so I tilted my head in her direction, and he turned back to her with a chuckle.

“2000.”

She glanced at me again, and I held up 4 fingers followed by 5. “450.”

Again the man chuckled before saying “1500.”

We were getting closer. I was hoping for between 600 and 800 when he pulled the tarp that was covering it off, but he wanted to the money to do up his kitchen, and I liked him, so I’d push it to 1000 if he went there. I signaled 6, so she said, “600,” and he final landed on 1000. I gave her a nod, so she said, “Deal,” and he quickly looked at me. 

With a shrug, I said, “I know it’s not worth that, but I like you,” and he chuckled again before saying, “Well, just for that, I’ll see what I can do to get it running so you can take it with ya today,” and I grinned before looking up at Alice. “Well, that alone is worth the extra. Go ahead and shake his hand.” 

She gave him a dazzling smile as she extended her hand, and he seemed genuinely charmed by it. I’d say if he was a good 40 to 50 years younger, he’d be smitten, but he thought he was way too old for her, so he kept it in the happy to have a pretty girl’s attention for as long as he had it category and offered to help her get acquainted with what she’d just bought. Little did he know, he could be her great-grandson times about 50. Real age versus apparent age was such a strange concept when it came to vampires, like it should be weird for me to be dating a guy who was over 164 years old, but it wasn’t, and yet someone, like Elijah just felt way older than he looked, so I didn’t think of him in that way, while Rebekah and Kol felt like peers, and Alice felt younger than me sometimes and a couple years older other times. Stefan mostly felt older all the time, but it ranged from being a couple years older to being like a grandpa depending on the day. Katherine was the same in that she always felt older, but it was more like consistently 3 to 5 years older and never really like a grandma. Klaus was the similar, but he consistently felt like he was in his early 30s. Ugh, vampires. I think it was best not to dwell on it too much unless I was asking about historical things from their past, because it was better for my sanity if I didn’t. 

I wasn’t sure how we got the little Blue Beetle home, but we managed to get it just over the line before it finally broke down in a quite literal billow of smoke late that night/very early the next morning. Grabbing a nearby fire extinguisher from the garage, I quickly put it out as Alice got out and looked sadly at her purchase. Nudging her with my elbow, I said, “Look at it this way. It’s entirely yours, and that should make it just about the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.” 

The corners of her mouth turned up as she tried not to smile. “I do like the white flowers on it, but it just looks so sad right now.”

Were the stenciled on flowers why she’d wanted this one specifically? Biting my bottom lip to keep from laughing, I nodded before saying, “Well, don’t worry about that. It is dead, but bringing it back to life is part of the fun, and I promise it will be worth it when you finally start it again.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

“Get a manual on Beetles, because I’m not familiar with them other than knowing that the engine is in the back. Go through it piece by piece, see what’s salvageable and what’s not, replace what needs replacing . . . and lots and lots of online shopping for parts . . . Should probably get Stefan to take a look at it too. He’s good with cars.” I looked up at her, and she still seemed a little unconvinced, so I said, “We could always start by looking at interiors if you want and cosmetic stuff like that to cheer you up?”

Exhaling a breath of relief, she finally said, “Oh, that would be wonderful. I think he must’ve let generations of cats live in it. Everything inside it has got to go.”


	58. The Scorpion and the Shrew

I’d been listening to music with my phone, but after seeing how low the battery was when it rang, I thought I should probably charge it soon. Not really wanting to touch it more than necessary with my dirty hands, I left it resting on a nearby work bench and put it on speaker phone using my elbow. “Hello?”

_What did you say to my Dad, Eve?_

“Pretty sure Founder’s Council business is classified, Bonnie.” I’d get his vervain hook up out of him eventually.

_”About me!”_

I smiled to myself before saying, “Oh . . . He wants a family meeting, does he?” 

_”You know damn well he does. What did you tell him?”_

“What I said I was going to tell him when you were ripping me apart . . . Your mother is lovely by the way.”

_”You talked to her too?!“_

“Yep. She’s very worried about her daughter.”

I heard a faint scream of frustration from the other end of the line and exhaled a silent laugh. “All right, well, it was nice talking to you, but I’m in the middle of something, so I’m gonna let you go. Buh-bye.” Before she could respond, I ended the call. Elena should’ve tried harder to convince her to get rid of her powers, or you know, Bonnie should’ve done more to get rid of them herself after what Imelda said to her. I seemed to remember Damon getting my Dad involved to try and talk me out of the Sun and Moon Ritual, and I hadn’t exactly listened to him, but Bonnie hadn’t endured a lifetime of brainwashing from her parents, so maybe them working together as a united front for once to help her would get through to her better than Dad's last minute change of heart had with me. 

Going back to the Beetle, I worked at extracting another part from the engine, examined it, and saw that it was crumbling in places from the rust, so I threw it over my shoulder, and it made a satisfying clatter as it landed in a box of other discarded parts on the garage floor. Looking up the part number in the book I’d found, I wiped my hands on a rag and carefully texted the number to Alice, who’d had Stefan show her how to order parts online. When I was done, I went back to the engine and barely had time to look at it when I was interrupted again. “Explain to me how this isn’t a tragically common way for you to be spending your time?”

I’d spent a few days waiting for him to make a move so I could make mine. Maybe this was it. Ducking around the opened hood, I saw Kol casually leaning up against the side of the garage door, like he’d been there for a while, and he might have been in the general vicinity of the house for a couple of minutes if he’d been looking for me, but he hadn’t been there. I would’ve known. I was always ready for it these days. That’s what happened when you let tension build. It put you on high alert. “If you haven’t figured out in 1000 years that when your life is extraordinary what’s common can sometimes feel like a vacation, then I think that’s probably what’s tragic.”

Looking at my grease-coated clothes, he shook his head. “Well, if you ask me, what’s tragic is that your idea of a holiday doesn’t include you in a bikini on a beach somewhere.” In faux-confusion, he added, “Although, I can’t really decide if your attire is appalling or alluring right now, so I might be sold on it yet.” 

I rolled my eyes and went back to disassembling the engine. “Then, I guess it’s a good thing that I’m vacationing alone and don’t care what you think.” 

“Such abrasiveness is unbecoming, Darling.”

I rolled my eyes again. “Yeah, well, speaking as if you’re schmoozing royalty at court hasn’t been becoming in at least the last 300 years, so while we may be in our own individual boats, we’re both still sailing on the same unflattering sea.”

I heard him chuckle and peeked around the hood again. “I find that I like you and am annoyed by you in equal measure.”

“You're not the first and probably won't be the last to think that.” I gave him a smug grin at pointing out his lack of originality before disappearing back behind the hood as I asked, “What’d you need, Kol?”

With a sigh, he answered, “I heard some troubling things, so I came here to see if they were true.”

“Well, that sounds ominous, but ask away anyway.”

There was a long enough pause after that, but I waited him out, and eventually he said, “Your friend Alice doesn’t like me very much, does she?”

Interesting emphasis on the word 'your' there. “Nope, but I’m guessing the reason why isn’t a mystery to you.”

“Do you know the full story?”

“I don’t know any of the story, so I haven’t heard a biased take or anything. All I know is that she thinks that you and Klaus are both evil, but he’s worse, and you’re more childish about it . . . And she said you’d know more about Silas than her, because she’d heard that you’ve hung out with witches more . . . Those are the only two times that she has said anything about you, specifically, and I respect her privacy enough not to push too much even though I still try sometimes.”

“Is it true what I’ve heard? Can she really summon lightening?”

“I know she almost fried Rebekah with it . . . I mean, I couldn’t see it, but I was there, and I know that when I first brought her here, she made some pretty kick ass funnel clouds form over the house. She doesn’t command nature. It’s more like nature is in tune with her emotions when they’re heightened, and unlike normal vampires, she can hear thoughts long distance too. I think she likes the quiet here with the vervain in the town’s water supply.” 

Sounding like he was looking in the direction of the house, he said, “She was always a little different. For her, being a witch was never just about the magic. She was a powerful psychic too, and she swore that the two were linked in some way . . . Her magic might be gone in a traditional sense, but if her psychic powers are still intact, that might explain the connection she still has to nature through atmokinesis and the amplification of a normal vampire’s mind reading abilities.”

Seriously? Every time I thought I was starting to understand magic, there always seemed to be something else about it that changed the rules surrounding it or how it worked, and I freaking hated it. Guess I was going to have start looking into psychics now, because if there was one thing I didn’t doubt, it was Alice’s knowledge on these kinds of things. “So the reason a run of the mill witch turned vampire can’t - ” 

Turning back in my direction, he quickly said, “I’ll have you know I was a witch prodigy.”

“Fine, but as a witch prodigy, did you unlock your psychic powers that she said all witches have, or was that something she was able to do because she was conscious enough of it to do it, because I don’t think very many witches know they can or even how to do something like that.” 

His attention returned to the house. “She could teach me. I’d settle for a quasi-connection to nature if nothing else.”

Except, Alice apparently unlocked those powers prior to her becoming a vampire, so maybe it just wasn’t something a witch could do after they turned, and if not very many witches knew they could do that before being turned and the ones who did were almost never turned, then that might be what made her a rarity, or maybe there was another reason for it, like a normal vampire’s psychic abilities were an upgrade for almost every other human or witch turned vampire, but those paled in comparison to her natural psychic abilities, and that extra psychic energy that she possessed went into giving her a few extra abilities, so he’d never be able to learn that. Was I going to say that to the Original standing outside my garage? Nope. I was going to go back to working on the engine.

“Or perhaps, you don’t think she will.” 

“You seem perfectly aware of how she feels about you right now. You don’t need me to tell you what I think.”

“Is it true that you met her when you killed her husband?”

I shot him a cautious look that was hidden by the opened trunk/hood in front of me. “It is.”

“And yet she still seems very protective of you.”

“Is there a question in there somewhere?”

“Merely making an observation.”

“Whatever. You want me to think that if I could be on good terms with her, then you can, but I think you know that it’s not going to be as easy as that, and you resent that it seems to be one reaction for you because of whatever you did almost a millennium ago and a different reaction for me for something that was much more recent, but there are some pretty fundamental differences between what each of us did, and I don’t even need to know what you did to know that. I have the feeling that whatever you did is wrapped up in why she had to flip her switch for the first 300 years she was a vampire, which defined her next 700 years; whereas with me, her husband was a dick to her, so it could be said that I did her a favor whether she knew it at the time or not, and after I killed him, I didn’t leave her to pick up the pieces by herself. If anything, I’ve tried to help repair the damage that was not only caused by him but by whatever you did as well. Next question and / or observation.”

“I heard he was a very powerful witch.”

“He was.”

“And you killing him wasn’t by accident.”

“Nope.”

“Then is it also true that you got what you used to kill him from my journal and used it because you’re a hunter of more than just vampires?”

Now we were getting closer to why he was really here. “Yep.” I grabbed the rag I’d been using and came around to the side of the car. Leaning back against it, I focused on getting the grime off my hands and asked, “Is that a problem?”

“You didn’t say you were a hunter.” 

So me pilfering his ideas and improving on them was okay with him? Seemed to be. My eyebrow arched as I tossed him a brief side-glance. “I would’ve thought that it was obvious.“

“That you’re psychotic is obvious.”

“Well, psychotic would indicate that I’ve had a break from reality. I’d say it’s more that I have sociopathic tendencies, since I was made this way rather than born this way, but I’d accept psychopathic tendencies as well.” 

“I’m sticking with psychotic if you think they’re only tendencies.” I did a poor job of concealing that I thought that was funny when I looked at him, and he laughed. “What? I’m merely trying to see who it is I’ve gotten myself in league with here . . . You also didn’t tell me that your cousin is the one with the tattoo.” 

“I did not.”

“Nik and Becca both seem sure that you don’t want him killed.”

“Ah, so the real question is how good of a hunter am I?” It sounded like there’d been quite a bit going on behind the scenes. Plenty of time for family gossip and mind games to turn my ally against me. I chanced another side-glance at him. “I’m guessing they’ve both given you their opinions?” 

“You’re the one who killed Mikael?” I nodded, and he said, “And all my brother’s hybrids.” 

“Most of them. Stefan got a few, and Elijah finished off the last one that Klaus must’ve held in reserve, but that was a few weeks later.”

“Did you really kill an Original Vampire my Mother created?”

“Uh huh.” 

“And it was with another weapon you created using what you found in my journal?”

Tossing the blackened rag onto a nearby worktop, I answered, “Yep.”

I looked at him, and sounding amused, he said, “I suppose my sister could be right. My brother might have had a legitimate reason to keep us separated if our minds have already created something that could kill my entire family. Imagine the possibilities now that we’re actually collaborating . . . But for him to be so adamant about it? I have another theory.”

That didn’t sound very promising. “This is the part where you start giving me the reasons you’re thinking about killing me, isn’t it?”

Giving me something of a genuine smile, he said, “Well, I am a scorpion, am I not?”

“That you are.” 

“But you weren’t being entirely truthful when you said you were just a frog . . . I think you’re more of a shrew.” 

Shrews ate scorpions, but he was also calling me an aggressively assertive woman. I thought it was funnier than I should considering there was a part of him that’d meant it to be the insult that it was and not just banter. “Insults as puns. Very clever.”

Something behind his eyes shifted, and they held the kind of amusement that felt like it brought danger with it as he said, “How Alice has literally let you get away with murder is one thing, but to get away with as much as you have with my brother, or frankly my sister . . . Would I be right in assuming that if I were to speak with Elijah, I’d find that he’s let you get by with far more than he ever would have tolerated from just about anyone else?”

“If the reputation that preceded him was in any way accurate? Probably.”

“You’re not a Mikaelson family groupie, are you.”

Stated, like a fact, not a question. “What I am, is unable to get you people to leave me alone. You’re always walking into my house, knocking on my door, knocking on my window, showing up in my classes, kidnapping my sister, kidnapping me, or calling me on the phone. I do seem to remember a time that I stormed the Mikaelson castle and put you all out with a single wooden bullet, but I hardly think that makes me a rabid fan of some kind.”

He remembered that happening, because he'd obviously been knocked unconscious by it too. Now he knew why it had happened, and yes, it was a reminder not to underestimate me, but it was also another thing I’d done that his family would’ve killed anyone else for doing. “You might be a little older and female, but you are without a doubt my brother’s second attempt at taking in a stray.”

I take it that if Klaus had tried to raise a kid once upon a time, that hadn’t gone down well with Kol, because Klaus wasn’t the only one who was territorial with his family. In fact, it’d probably sting more for Kol if he saw someone else receiving what he wanted from his family, and where the hell was that kid now? I should be wary of where this was going, and I absolutely was, but I also felt bad for him. “I’m too feral to be a stray, but if I were one, then I’ve already been taken in by the Salvatores.”

Looking around at the house and grounds, he muttered, “For now . . . But all you being feral means is that you have an untamed fire that he admires, and you must provide him with vast amounts of entertainment, because from the sounds of it, you keep him on his toes.” 

Before he could find a suitable object to throw and impale me with from there, I tried once again to put his mind at ease. “I have enough problems with my own family without adding the 4000 years of baggage from each of you that your family brings with it, so let me be clear. I do not want to join the Mikaelson House of Horrors, and I am in no way infringing on your role as the fun bearer in your family, Kol . . . Besides, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, I am a young adult, and stray implies that I’m an orphaned child unable to take care of myself.”

Picking at the paint around the frame, he shrugged, “Well, if you’re not a stray, you’re something. I take it I have you to thank for the sit down Nik tried to have with me? Certainly hasn’t tried a different approach with me in 1000 years. Doubt he came up with it on his own, although I suspect he didn’t use it quite the way you intended . . . you being more earnest and all.” 

That’s right around the time that I started to get a bad feeling about this whole chat. If Klaus had used what I told him about Kol to try and manipulate Kol into doing what he wanted, then Kol was obviously smart enough to have seen through it, and he wasn’t going to react to it very well. He wanted Klaus to mean it, not just say it, and Klaus probably had meant whatever he’d said, but he’d still used it to get something out of his brother. It just felt like a recipe for disaster. “Anything I said to him was something he already knows, but it’s easier for him to ignore it than admit his own fault in all of it.” 

“So, you just decided to point it all out to him.”

“In fairness, he was feeling paranoid and gave me something to make me tell the truth, so I wound down the clock by sleeping and talking about you and Silas.” 

His eyes flicked from the frame to me, “Went well, did it?”

“He may have gotten a little territorial by the end of the night.”

“Well, that’s Nik for you . . . And what about your family? This cousin of yours . . . ” 

“I’m not going to change my position on Silas, but there are other ways to stop them that don’t include killing Jeremy . . . Did you check Klaus’s car for the sword?”

“Oddly enough he’s made it disappear.”

Leaning back, I considered it. “Then it was in the car, but it’s not anymore. The car is now a red herring, and it’d be a waste of time to look for it.”

“Unless that’s what he wants us to think.”

“Mmm.” 

I glanced at him, and he said, “You know what needs to be done. It’s the only certain way to put a stop to this.”

“If you kill Jeremy, another Hunter will replace him.”

“Yes, but they aren’t exactly easy to come by.”

“And your brother has an eternity to search for them along with a reason to do it. It won’t take him another 900 years to find another one this time. It’s better to eliminate the threat of Silas being found now than punt it further down the road.”

“Because now is when you’re alive to eliminate that threat.”

“Exactly.” 

“I’ve been at this for centuries. I could continue on with it long after you’re no longer here. Or you could turn . . . if it’s really that important to you.”

“And play whack a mole with supernatural hunters forever? If I turn, it’ll be for something better than that.”

“How about a compromise?”

Okay, something was definitely up with him. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d know how to do that.” 

“What if instead of you and I fighting over killing your cousin, I take out the witch.”

“That’s a bad idea. I’m working on getting her to give Expression up willingly, but - ”

“She won’t just give that up. The power would have gone to her head.“

“Then you should definitely stay away from her. I was on the receiving end of her powers before she got the upgrade, and it was not fun.”

“Okay, well how about I try it anyway, and if it doesn’t work, I cut your cousin’s arm off?”

My first response should’ve been an unequivocal ‘no,’ and it kind of was, but at the same time, Jeremy would get to live, and if a good chunk of the map was missing, then Silas wouldn’t get out. Hm. Would it be so bad to have it as a real last resort, Plan M? Maybe Not. “It would hinder him being a hunter, which I really don’t think he should be.” 

Kol’s eyebrows arched in surprise. “I am talking about cutting your cousin’s arm off.” I nodded, and he said, “You’re actually considering it?”

“Well, I know which hand the hunter’s mark started on, so it’s not like the wrong one would be taken, and it hasn’t grown very far, so he wouldn’t have to lose the whole thing . . . And I suppose you should probably compel a surgeon to do it, so there’s minimal damage . . . But I think I might need to talk it over with my morality guide and then my sister, so can I think about it?”


	59. Hungry Like the Wolf

_“WHAT?! NO!”_ I tried not to snicker. I could almost hear Damon pacing back and forth in his cell on the other end of the line. _“No. No. No. No. No. Do not cut Jeremy’s arm off.”_

“Well, I wouldn’t be doing it. I was thinking a surgeon should.” He went silent. “What? It could work as a real last resort. I was thinking of calling it Plan M.”

_“This is exactly what I was talking about when I said this entire situation was going to start dragging you down to their level.”_

“But this way, Jeremy stays safe for the rest of his life because hunting is hard enough with two arms. He can just retire now and live in peace.” He went quiet again before breaking out in a fit of laughter. As it started to calm, I asked, “Is it wrong because it’s Jeremy?”

Exhaling a soft breath, he answered, _“For me? If it was something I cared about, then no. For you? Yes.”_

“Because he’s family, and I’m supposed to be taking care of him?” 

_“See. You already know this. You don’t need me to tell you. You just want me to talk you out of it, because if it wasn’t Jeremy you would do it.”_

“Pretty sure I wouldn’t if it was any newly anointed, mostly innocent hunter either . . . Suppose, there’s no guarantee that the tattoo wouldn’t just sprout up on his back, or that he won’t be coerced into killing any vampires with his other hand, so really both arms would have to go, wouldn’t they?” 

He exhaled another laugh. _“It’s probably a good thing you said that, or I would’ve gone after him tonight while you were asleep.”_

That surprised me a little bit. “Are you saying you actually care about the Silas-led monster apocalypse?”

_“In the short term, I’ll do anything to keep you from being taken again, but overall big picture? I think your life’s already been ruined enough because of the hype surrounding a certain other evil guy. I don’t care about Silas. I say bring him on, because how bad could he be? It’s the dropping of the veil part and all the monsters you’ve killed, who are gonna be lining up for round 2 that I don’t want.”_

“Really?" Maybe he was more on board with the cause than I’d thought.

 _“You’ve got me thinking about it anyway.”_ I finished doing a thorough inventory, and he asked, _”Everything’s still there?”_

Before I'd left Elena's after our chat about the Elena / Jeremy escape plan, I'd let her know I was still going to stop by Rebekah's house on my way out of town. I may not have actually done it until the next day, because I hadn't wanted to give Elena enough time to change her mind and get anyone, like Bonnie, involved in trying to stop me from taking the professor, but I knew that Elena was smart enough to know that giving Rebekah her dagger back was probably why I was still going to go there, and giving that dagger to Rebekah is exactly what I'd done. If Elena still wanted to chase a dagger, then good luck getting the one Rebekah had, and at least it gave her a target to chase that wasn’t me, which would keep her out of my stuff. 

That accounted for the white oak ash dagger I was down now. Luckily, she and Matt hadn’t found my stash of anti-magic serum. I did not want to be responsible for that being used on anyone. White oak bullets? All there in the last place I’d left them. That just left the stake. “I’m gonna go talk to Klaus.”

_”Is all this really necessary?”_

“I don’t want anything to get out of hand.”

 _”I’m sure Jeremy will be glad to hear that.”_

Exhaling a laugh, I said, “There was just something really off about Kol. He doesn’t strike me as the type to want to hear both sides of the story, or to be reasonable enough to flip on a dime if the counterargument is good enough, and he isn’t the type to discuss compromises or battle strategy. Something else is going on . . . I don’t know what his siblings have said to him, or what he’s heard other places, but he was looking to confirm whatever he heard or suspected based on what he’s heard, and I’m pretty sure he’s upset with Klaus in a big way.”

_“Which is why you think that what he wanted to know is if you have more than one weapon that can kill he and his family.”_

“Yeah, and he’s the only one of Klaus’s siblings that I’m not sure won’t kill him given the chance, especially when Klaus is the one pushing so hard for the cure. It changes the game completely.”

_”So, does this mean we’re on Klaus’s side now?”_

“For the moment, I think we have to at least watch his back for him. He’ll still be a dick on all the rest though. Speaking of which, I’ve gotta go. You’re in the clear to keep an eye on Stefan later?” His brother had been spending more time with Rebekah the last day or so. Guess that was one way for them to get their hands on the dagger she had, but according to the head of our covert operations, to her face, Stefan was supposedly teaming up with her over the cure. Not that Stefan had said even that much to me about it. With me, it was aIl, 'I thought you said I should move on,' which he was clearly only saying to keep me from putting a call in to Katherine. I wasn’t worried. My day would come, especially after he inevitably screwed Rebekah over for my sister.

_”Should be fine.”_

We said our goodbyes, and then I texted Elena to tell her that she and Jeremy needed to grab their go bags and get out of town. After that, I drove over to Klaus’s house. I could’ve called him. Maybe I should have if the news I was delivering was bad, but I needed to do it in person, because then he could see for himself that there was no trickery involved on my part, and I could react to the way he reacted better if I could see him instead of just hear him. Besides, what if I was in the middle of trying to talk him down, and he just crushed his phone in his hand? My message wouldn’t get through, and he’d ruminate on it long enough for it to become a problem. Plus, it’d be cowardice pure and simple if I did it over the phone rather than in person. I was never going to run from him, so I was taking a stand now by trying to prevent all that at the outset. 

I only had to knock a few times before he answered. He looked exactly the way I would’ve expected. Smug. “Ah, I thought I heard your car. Here to admit that working with my brother was a mistake?”

Yep. Pretty sure he had tried to use what I’d told him about Kol to manipulate his brother against me. “Maybe.”

At me admitting that, his brow smoothed, and his eyes took on a look that said he was going to fix whatever the problem was. “What’s he done?”

“See, that’s the thing. I’m not sure. He didn’t happen to stop by here in the last hour or so, did he?” I'd take the blank expression I received as a ‘yes.’ “Yeah, uh . . . He dropped by my house to have a chat, asked all kinds of questions, even talked battle strategy with me, and came up with a compromise on what to do about Jeremy . . . It was all very normal - too normal. He didn’t just talk to you. He talked to Rebekah too, and if she gave him different pieces of the puzzle to put together with what you said, then . . . I’ve already checked my weapons. I think you should check yours.”

In less than a second, he went from not knowing what I meant to knowing exactly what I meant and disappeared from the doorway. I heard some loud crashes come from further inside the house a couple of minutes later and felt a little awkward standing there. It was getting dark, so the sun wasn’t bothering me. Weather wasn’t too bad. Nice night for a stroll. Rocking back on my heels, I looked at my watch and wondered how much longer he was going to be. 

It was another few minutes before he came around a corner, stalking towards the door, less like a wolf and more like a lion, but his eyes weren’t on me, and it soon became apparent that he was going to walk right on past me without saying a word. I put my hand out to stop him, and he abruptly halted to look down at it. Right. Probably shouldn’t have touched him. I quickly dropped my hand from his chest before he decided to just tear it off. 

As I put it behind my back for good measure, he turned to glare down at me, and I said, “I only wanted to find out if he did what I thought he did, and now I have a pretty good idea that he did, so I’m just going to go take care of that, and you can stay here – “

I took a step to the side so I could get out of there without turning my back on him, but nope, didn’t look like I was going to be leaving just then. He grabbed me by the upper arms so fast, I didn’t see him move or really even feel it until he had me picked up off the ground again. Holding me up to his eye level, he gritted out, “Are you commanding me?”

I exhaled a sigh at having found myself in this position again. Warrior queen of old indeed. Must’ve left a lasting impression, because these incidents had become much more frequent since I’d stared him down without knowing it was him. “I believe I said ‘can,’ and meant it as a suggestion, but I’d like it if you stayed here.”

His tone maintained most of its hostility, but it did drop a notch. “I told you he wasn’t to be trusted!” 

“I know, but I’m asking you not to escalate this. His fear of Silas is real, and so is his fear of those daggers. If he sees you, he’ll feel cornered, and he will lash out to protect himself. I don’t want anything to happen to you, and I don’t want anything to happen to everyone else I know either. I’ll dagger him, and he can sit the rest of this out, but then no matter who wins, he needs to be let go when it’s over . . . He shouldn’t be punished for being afraid.”

His eyes narrowed and then widened slightly as he ominously said, “No,” before dropping me.

“No?” With a smirk, he turned and was on his way to the drive way. Following him, I asked, “What the hell does that mean?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard it before.”

“I hear it all the goddamn time. Why are you saying it to me?”

“It occurs to me that I haven’t said it to you enough.” Heading for my car, he added, “So, no I will not stay here. No, I will not trust you with daggering my brother when he is clearly unraveling, and no, I will not take advice from you on how to deal with him once he has been put back in his box.” Opening the passenger side door of my car, he looked back at me and said, “Where are we headed? If you don’t know where he is right now, I’m sure you have an idea of where he is going to be.”

Shooting him a glare as I circled around the front of my car, I dug my keys out of my pocket, climbed into the driver’s seat, and grabbed my phone from its charger to see if Elena had gotten back to me. Because of everything that was happening right now, I was sure that Klaus would agree to Jeremy getting out of town, but if he also daggered Kol tonight, then Jeremy would just have to be back by tomorrow. If only Kol had stolen the daggers from Klaus instead of the stake . . . Wait. I briefly glanced at the sneak sitting in my passenger seat. Kol had taken the daggers too, hadn’t he? That’s why Klaus was getting a lift off of me. He wanted one of mine, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to ask for one. He’d simply take it at the worst time for me. If I gave him Finn’s and kept mine, he couldn’t do that. Problem sorted.

Ugh, these Mikaelsons. They really were a difficult lot. If Kol hadn’t had his feelings hurt, then everything would’ve been fine. If Klaus hadn’t hidden the white oak stake with the daggers, then everything would be fine too. Kol would’ve just taken the daggers, probably his best idea to date, and then if he just ran around after Jeremy with a hatchet to remove Jeremy’s arms, Klaus would’ve had no other option but to say Jeremy could work on finishing his tattoo out of town. 

He would’ve stayed here to deal with his cocky little brother instead of going to babysit Jeremy himself and probably would've spent most of his time trying to get a dagger back from one of the three people who had them now, and at worst, if Elena assumed he'd threaten important people to her, she'd actually have Jeremy working on the tattoo and give Klaus updates on it, but it still would have taken a good bit of time for the tattoo to be completed if they had to search out vampires to kill themselves, time that would give Kol and I a chance to find the sword. Then Kol could have destroyed it and left town before Klaus daggered him with Rebekah’s dagger or one of mine.

At that point, we would’ve been in the clear, but now Kol was a danger to almost everyone I knew, and I’d have to come up with something else. Maybe having my cousins arms amputated wouldn’t be so bad. If he was like Connor, then he’d have supernatural healing abilities. If we kept the arms, they could probably be reattached when the sword was gone.

Unlocking my phone, I saw that I had a message, but it was from Kol instead of Elena. _On second thought, I’m going with Plan B._

On second thought? Yeah, right. He either couldn’t find Bonnie or had tried to go after her, and she’d kicked his ass. I thought about texting Elena again to tell her I needed some kind of confirmation that she’d gotten my 1st text or that she and Jeremy were on their way out the door. It’s something I would’ve thought would be common sense, so a confirmation text hadn’t made its way into the exit protocol, but what was in the protocol was that they were supposed to leave their phones behind to prevent them being traced, and if she was already gone, then she wouldn’t get my follow up text. If that was the case, then was it worth the risk of sending it in front of Klaus before I’d convinced him that it’s what needed to be done and got his approval on it?

“Problem?” 

Starting my car, I shrugged. “Just picking a song.”

My thumb hovered over one, and he said, “If you play _Werewolves of London_ , I’m going to throw that thing out the window. I never want to hear it again.” 

“It did appear to be a favorite in the backwater dive bars where your associates always seemed to be.” 

“Only after you joined us and in bars with a jukebox.”

“Could’ve been in a movie over the summer. That’d explain the uptick in popularity.”

”Uptick?! I seem to remember it being played at least 10 times one night.”

“That jukebox could’ve been broken.”

“I know it was you. You have a vindictive streak that will have its revenge even if only in petty ways, because you know as well as I do that those can serve as a tactic in psychological warfare, and if I’d broken by reacting to it or had so much as acknowledged it, you would’ve seen it as a victory, but now, before you start, I am telling you that if you put that song on, there will be consequences.” 

If he’d acknowledged it my ass. Every time that song played this summer, a shadow would cross his face. How did he think I learned what looks were him being annoyed versus those that signaled a real threat? “As if I’d have that song screwing up the good music on my phone.” 

I chose _Hungry Like the Wolf_ by Duran Duran, and almost as soon as the song’s opening chords started blaring out of the speakers, he ripped my phone out of my hands saying, “The same goes for this one. I believe it alternated in on nights when the other one wasn’t available, and it was a terrible song almost 30 years ago. Certainly hasn’t gotten better with age.” Looking at the screen, his face fell into a stoic expression before he turned to me. “I thought you didn’t have that other monstrosity on here.”

I tried so hard to maintain a dry tone and not laugh. I think I succeeded. “No, it’s just not mixed in with the others. See, there. It’s in my ‘Klaus’ playlist.” 

Holding up my phone for me to see, he retorted, “This is proof.“

“Maybe we just heard them so many times that I now associate them with you.”

Looking back down at my phone he muttered, “It’s not much of a playlist, is it? _Psycho Killer_ . . . and these two are all you have for me?” Flicking out of his play list, I wasn’t all that surprised when he went straight to the one he did. “Damon has at least 40 here . . . Caroline has about half that . . . Alec’s has – none.” 

“Well, I never had a chance to listen to any music with him to help him get his memories back, but I wasn’t going to erase what should have been his playlist because of that. I actually think the silence in it speaks volumes.”

Klaus paused before his brow furrowed. “Then there’s one for Mom, Dad, and Rose . . . Is she - ” 

“The one that had to go on the run for letting Katherine trick her? Yeah . . . She was my first werewolf bite . . . She helped me with a song right after she got bitten, because she knew learning how to play it on the guitar was on my bucket list of things to do before I died, so that’s in there, and the other songs in there are from when she got worse. I played her some songs to keep her calm while she was lying in the corner of my piano room. Then she got loose, and I had to go find her. It went from bad to worse . . . and all of that is what precipitated the werewolf massacre outside of town.” 

He tossed me a side-glance before bypassing my Mom and Dad’s playlists as he said, “And then that’s it for people. What’s this ‘Life After Death?”

“Oh. I tend to think of when Damon put me in that coffin as a metaphorical death, because when I clawed my way out, my old life was gone . . . My parents were both dead. My secret life was out and what I was supposed to do with it was gone. Any new music I’ve heard that I like or already knew, but learned how to play on either the piano or guitar since then, goes on that playlist.”

“Shall we listen to something from that list then?”

“If you want . . . guess you can pick, since I’m the one driving.”

“Something you could’ve been doing by now but aren’t because you’re buying your sister time to get out of town with her brother?” His eyebrow arched as he looked at me, and I smiled in response. Rolling his eyes, he said, “Fine. Until Kol is dealt with, it’s best if they aren’t anywhere near him.” Yep. My plan would’ve definitely worked if Klaus did a better job hiding things that could kill him.


	60. Lose Your Soul

My truce with Klaus over the music selection was short lived. “What is Dead Man’s Bones?”

“It’s Ryan Gosling’s band.” That entire album was one of the best tributes to Halloween that I'd been able to find. Klaus looked at me for more information, and I said, “The actor?” He clearly no idea who I was talking about. Someone was falling behind on keeping up with the times. “It’s not bad.”

“Well, we’re not listening to _Werewolf Heart_ anyway.” I laughed, and he said, “They have a song about Zombies too?“

“It’s good, but I think I’d rather hear – “

“I thought I was choosing.”

“Well, are you going to pick one, or are you just going to keep asking about – “

Giving me a look, he randomly put his finger down on one of the songs from that album, and _Lose Your Soul_ started playing. It made me smile. “That’s the one I was going to say anyway.” He relaxed as he put my phone in its cradle. He didn’t seem to mind it too much, might have even found the intro decent. The singing started, and his expression said he might definitely be able to live with it.

_Oh  
You're gonna lose your soul, tonight  
You're gonna lose your soul  
You're gonna lose your soul tonight, tonight_

That’s all the further we got before he received a phone call. Turning the volume down, he answered, “Well, if it isn’t the happy homicidal maniac.” 

_Oh  
You're gonna lose control, tonight  
You're gonna lose control  
You're gonna lose control tonight, tonight, tonight_

Whatever was said on the other line made his face fall. “What?”

_I get up in the morning  
To the beat of the drum  
I get up to this feeling  
Keeps me on the run_

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

_I get up in the morning_  
Put my dreams away  
I get up, I get up, I get up again 

The call ended, he impulsively reached for my hand break, and we were no longer on our way to my sister’s to trap Kol in her empty house. Instead, we were skidding to a stop. I turned to look at him, and he had his hand around my throat and the back of my head smashed against the driver’s side window faster than I could say anything. “What the hell is going on?”

I honestly had no idea. I rasped out, “Who was that,” and he grabbed my phone to cut the music and look through the text messages. 

The one that caught his attention was the last one from Kol. “What is Plan B?”

“Cutting Jeremy’s arms off.” He gave me a look that said he didn’t think that was true, but now was absolutely not the time for lies or misdirection so I wouldn’t do either. “I’m serious . . . it was his compromise to not killing Jeremy . . . I told him I’d think about it . . . been doing it ever since if I’m honest.” 

He relaxed his hold somewhat. “What was your plan to keep your cousin’s arms intact?”

“Elena getting Jeremy out of town. On my way to your place, I told her to initiate the exit protocol we devised.”

“Does that entail – “ He was cut off by my phone ringing. Seeing that it was Damon, he said, “Talk to him the way you normally would,” like he thought whatever treachery was afoot would be explained by whatever Damon had to say. 

He put it on speaker phone, and I said, “Hey . . . any problems shadowing Stefan and Rebekah?” 

_”There’s something sketchy going on, all right. I just ran into Donovan.”_ Klaus looked from me to the phone and finally let me go, because why would I have Damon following Stefan if I knew what the others were planning? _“He says Stefan’s supposed to get him Rebekah’s dagger so he can use it on her._

“I understand them wanting her dagger, but why would they want to use it on her?”

Looking at me, Klaus answered, “They’re going after Kol. They don’t want her to retaliate.” 

_”Oh, great . . . you’re still with him.”_ ”

I handed my phone to Klaus while I disengaged my handbrake to get going again. He could find out what my deceitful sister was doing, but that was less important right now than getting to where Kol most likely was. Watching me to see how I'd respond, Klaus said, “Make him tell you what they’re planning,” but I didn’t disagree with him.

He seemed to relax when I added, “Yeah, go for it, Damon. I’m tired of this.” 

_”You hear that, quarterback?”_ Matt could be heard in the background, _“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, man! What – “_ The line went dead, and I floored it. We weren’t too far from Elena’s house. Shouldn't take more than another minute, or I'd just tell Klaus to get out and run, not that he would. He'd rather keep an eye on me, or I was pretty sure that's what he'd say if I suggested it.

“You really didn’t know?”

I flicked a glance in Klaus’s direction before shaking my head. “I know she had Matt break into my room, but they didn’t get anything . . . I thought they had to be either looking for the white oak stake or the daggers, so I gave Rebekah her dagger back and sort of indicated that’s what I was going to do to Elena, thinking that if Elena backed out on her promise to do this my way, she could chase your sister for it and would leave my stuff alone.”

“And the anti-magic potion you made?”

“I did a complete inventory of everything before I went to your house. I think Kol just wanted to find out if I really had it, so he could compare how you responded to me having something like that versus him getting something like the white oak stake, because your little chat seemed to make him supremely jealous, but I wanted to be sure he hadn't spent the last few days working out where I hide it, and he hadn't, because it was all where it should be . . . You know, even if they had any, then it can only be used by a human, and I don’t think Jeremy counts as one anymore, so with Matt with Stefan, they don't have anyone who could use it with them.”

“You failed to mention it that." 

"I fail to mention a lot of things and with good reason, don't you think?"

Sighing as he looked out the window, he mused, "They have something. If it’s not that - " 

My phone rang again, and Klaus answered, but before he could say anything, Damon did. _“My brother overheard Rebekah talking to Kol on the phone. Apparently, you need to learn how to hide things better. He has the white oak stake. It’s just the opportunity they’ve been waiting for . . . Bonnie is supposed to be on her way over to Elena’s. I can make it if - ”_

Klaus cut him off. “We’re almost there. Stay on Stefan and my sister . . . Don’t let him leave to get involved.” He hung up, as I sped around the corner onto the street where my sister lived, and I could only imagine the look on Damon’s face at being told what to do by Klaus. Bet it was golden.

“I take it you had him on vervain that night, so he wasn’t really compelled.”

“That would be correct.”

“So, you’ve had him spying on the others without them knowing, because they think he’s locked in the cell of his basement for Jeremy’s protection?” I nodded, and he almost smiled to himself. 

Pulling up to the curb outside my sister’s house, I took Finn’s dagger out of one of the inside pockets of my jacket and handed it to Klaus, then grabbed a gun from under my driver’s side seat and got out. I made it about halfway to the front door when I found my path blocked by Klaus. “Let me handle this.”

Deciding that I could work with that, I gestured in the direction of the house, like ‘please proceed,’ and he gave me an uncertain look at the ease with which I’d capitulated before turning towards the opened front door as he yelled, “Kol! Stop all this nonsense immediately and come home!” at which point, I sprinted behind him towards the tree at the side of the house. Scaling it in almost no time at all, I made my way out on a limb and leapt onto the roof. Klaus couldn’t get into the house, and I couldn’t invite him in, but one of us should be in there. Between the two of us, we could split Kol’s attention, and one of us should be able to dagger him, or that’s what I was thinking until I saw the absolute carnage of the second floor – broken doors, splintered wood, bullet holes, stakes embedded in walls, and blood splatter everywhere. 

“Jeremy!” I looked to my right and went around the corner to find my sister impaled to the wall. I was tempted to leave her there, because if she was there, she’d be safe, but she saw me and gave me an almost disgusted look at the second or two of time I wasted debating myself on what to do about her. “Well, are you going to just stand there, or – “ Yeah, if she couldn’t pull that spindle out, there’s no way I’d be able to do it. Good thing she was a vampire. Taking her hands, I put my foot against the wall behind her for leverage, and started to pull. We both seemed to ignore her pain-filled shrieks and managed to get her free a lot faster than she would’ve been able to do it herself. Gilbert sisters for the win. 

As soon as she was free of the spindle, she shoved past me as she vampire sprinted to the stairs . . . Maybe shoved wasn’t the right word for it. It really felt more like being catapulted into the wall from my perspective, and I found it kind of annoying. Getting up off the ground, I too made my way down the stairs and noticed that the front door had been shut, but Elena wouldn’t have taken the time to do it, so I assume that was Kol’s response to Klaus being here. How he managed to do that without Klaus throwing the dagger at him, I didn’t know, but I could think of two possible scenarios, each as likely as the other. One, even Original Hybrids had trouble hitting a moving target at the speed an Original Vampire could run and Kol had simply vampire sprinted to the door to slam it. The other was that Klaus had planned to coax Kol outside before daggering him. 

There was a loud yell from the kitchen as I got to the bottom step, so that’s where I headed and found a scene of complete chaos when I got there. My sister appeared to have attacked Kol with a meat cleaver, and Jeremy was using the sprayer from the kitchen sink to spray Kol down with vervain water. For a moment, I was sort of proud of the kid for using the vervain in the town’s water supply the way I’d always intended, but that was short lived. My sister, appearing to know exactly where the white oak stake was, pulled it out of Kol’s jacket, tossed it to Jeremy, and that was my moment to jump into the fray. Instead of using the dagger I had in my hand for Kol, I had to throw it at Jeremy. It hit him in the hand, and he dropped the stake. 

Turning in my direction, Elena looked like she was going to charge me, which I should’ve expected for hurting her brother, but to be honest, I sort of hadn’t, because Kol was much more of a threat to them at the moment. Didn’t matter. My instincts said to duck and dive, so sprinting forward, I took a half-step to the side and briefly dropped down at the exact moment needed to keep her from catching me when she did finally make her move, and I made it to Jeremy a couple of seconds later. Taking the dagger from his impaled hand, I turned as Kol started to heal from his burns, plunged the dagger into his heart saying, “I’m sorry. I’ll get you out of this as soon as it’s safe,” and that should have been it. It should’ve been over, except tensions and the adrenaline that went with them must’ve still been high, because I was then picked up from behind and thrown across the kitchen.

I crashed into the kitchen table. It didn’t quite collapse under me, but it did tip onto its side as I toppled onto the floor, and something told me I needed a weapon in my hand. Looking down at my feet, I saw a chair that’d been knocked over too, so I hauled back to finish breaking it with my foot, grabbed the chair leg that broke free and had something of a less lethal weapon than my gun or a proper stake by the time I got up from behind the table a couple seconds later. Elena was facing me, but looking back at Jeremy, and despite what I’d been hoping - that it’d really just been a misguided attempt at self-defense and emotions running high after a tense situation - it became clear in that moment that she was putting herself between me and her brother, not just to protect him from me, but so that he could finish the job. 

I had to get back over to Kol, get Jeremy away from him and the white oak stake, and I had to do it now. Elena was my sister, and I didn’t want to hurt her. I really didn’t, but words alone weren’t going to be enough when I only had a couple of seconds to stop them. I was going to have to do something I’d never done to her, and because I hadn’t, she wouldn’t expect it, so no amount of training with me would have made her prepared for it. Settling on a blitz attack, I hopped the table and stalked towards her saying, “This is why you shoved me upstairs, isn’t it?”

Her head whipped around to look at me, but as she opened her mouth to explain, I belted her across the temple with the leg of the chair. That should buy me 3 seconds. I immediately jabbed her in the solar plexus with the blunt end of the chair leg. That should buy me another 3 seconds. I then brought the makeshift baton down in a wide arch to swipe her legs out from under her. The instant she hit the ground, and before she could bring her arms up to shield her, I lifted the club high above me and hit her three times as hard as I could in the head. That should buy me about 40 seconds, and I needed them, because that’s the moment that I was tackled from the side by her brother. 

As we fell back towards the kitchen table, I maneuvered my landing in such a way that my back hit, and I was able to use my legs to flip him over my head onto the other side of the fallen table. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and saw Klaus standing at the back door. Would they be doing this if they knew he was here? Surely, they weren’t that stupid. Getting to my feet, I turned to look back at Jeremy as he got to his feet and pointed towards the doors saying, “Jeremy, look – “

Nope. Still wasn’t the time for words. Before he’d even taken a step towards me, the look on his face gave away his intent. Wasn’t a million miles away from how he’d looked at me when he had that ax before persuasion fixed him. In that supernatural hunter brain of his, I was now programmed to be a sympathizer, and I needed to protect myself. I faked like I was going to hit him in the head with the baton the way I had his sister, he went to block it, and left himself wide open for me to knee him as hard as I could in the side. He immediately recoiled as a reflex to protect himself, and I spun on the ball of my back foot to angle behind him, so I could kick the back of his exposed knee out to drop him to a kneeling position, then used my baton, like a baseball bat to hit him in the head. It didn’t knock him out, but it definitely knocked him over and stunned him. Elena was still down, but not for long, and she was weakly yelling, “No!” Yeah, all this was going to take a while for me to fix. 

Looking past her to Kol, I decided that I could do one of two things. I could either try to drag him to the back door and get him to his brother or give Klaus the thing that could kill his brother, which should make them stop fighting me. Then I could drag Kol to the back door free and clear. Dropping my makeshift club and darting past Elena’s outstretched arm, I muttered, “You two have lost your damn minds. Stay down,” and got to the sink. Keeping an eye on them, I bent down to pick up the white oak stake, and Elena got to her knees. She was a vampire. I couldn’t get past her without having another confrontation. A confrontation might mean losing the white oak stake. Looking around me, I saw the window above the sink. Surely neither of them would leave the house to get it if Klaus was outside.

I reached for latch, heard Jeremy semi-shout, “Elena,” and looked back. She was on her feet and facing him, like she was planning to see if he was okay. He was on his knees and clearly pointing her in my direction. Before she did what he wanted and tried to stop me, I pulled my gun and trained it on Jeremy as she turned to look at me. Now was the time for some words. “You come any closer, and I’m going to shoot him . . . You can’t kill Kol. It’s not right.”

“He was trying to cut Jeremy’s arms off!”

“What’s he even doing in here, Elena?” Her posture withered, and I sad, “That’s what I thought. Instead of leaving the way you told me you would, you decided to stay and set a trap for him.”

“I wouldn’t have had to do it if you’d done what you said you were going to do and handled it.”

“Except, I was handling it, and you stayed, so you’re the one who put Jeremy’s arms in jeopardy. What happened to you saying that you know that I know what I’m doing?”

“You might know what you’re doing in a normal hunting situation, Eve, but you are entirely too close to this, and I will not lose Jeremy because you are too blind to see them for what they are.”

“I think you need to take a step back and have another look at which one of us is too close to this. My eyesight’s just fine.”

“Then why aren’t you helping us instead of trying to stop us.”

“I am helping you, just not in the way you want, and I don’t care if you are my family. I’m not going to help you do something that’s so blatantly wrong.”

“This isn’t about right and wrong.“

“No, it’s not, because there is nothing about what you want to do that is right, so it’s entirely about how wrong you are.”

“No, it’s about you thinking that Kol is your friend, and – “

“I already told you he isn’t my friend. Yes, I like him, and I could learn a hell of a lot from him about witches, who are the fucking bane of my existence, but this isn’t about just him. It’s about all the others – “

“It’s the fastest and safest way to complete Jeremy’s tattoo!“

“And that’s the other fucking problem with it. How many times do I have to tell you – “

“We need that cure! It’s the only way to keep Jeremy safe!”

“You’re a liar and a manipulator, and that was a whole lot of you being both, but I’m pretty fucking sure that Klaus isn’t going to want you to get him the cure this way. In fact, he’s right outside listening to every word we’re saying, so why don’t we ask him?”

Her eyes widened, so I guess her being impaled to the wall and getting to Jeremy had been her only focus, or she would have heard Klaus when he was shouting at his brother from the lawn. “Why would you bring him here?!”

“He thinks he’s leading the charge, but really he’s my back up.”

“Can you not joke right now? This is serious.”

“I know it is. He’s probably trying to find ways to rip this place apart now that he’s heard what’s going on . . . Let it go, and stand down."

I might know how serious this was, but clearly she didn’t take me seriously, because she took a step in my direction saying, “We definitely can’t do that now. Bonnie should – “ and dropping my hand, I shot a newly risen Jeremy in the foot. He fell over again, and she looked back at him in shock. When her head turned in my direction again, there were black veins under her very red eyes. I had a gun in one hand that was still trained on Jeremy, because I had the two of them to consider, and he was already starting to get back on his feet. I also had a stake in my other hand. Maybe it was all the same to her and not really any worse than what I’d already done, but staking her was a line I didn’t want to cross. That’s probably why I wound up being bitten. 

I hadn't thought she would, but it is how she’d brought Connor down, so I guess it stands to reason, she’d do the same thing to another hunter she saw as a threat, but this hunter was loaded with vervain, and being a baby vampire, she just didn’t know how to deal with that. Clutching her throat, she took a step back with a wheezy cough, and putting the stake into my hand with the gun, I reached up with my free hand to feel the blood oozing out of my neck, got a good bit on my fingers, and casually stepped towards her to rub it in her eyes. She doubled over as she turned away from me with a scream. With my gun no longer on him, Jeremy was already hobbling his way back over to this side of the room with the club I'd made out of the chair leg, and I didn’t even have enough time to open the damn window, let alone time to move the stake back into my other hand, aim the gun, and shoot him again at the speed he was moving. 

If he attacked me while I was holding the white oak stake, the same thing that’d applied to his sister, did to him. There was simply a greater likelihood of him being able to steal it from me in an altercation. Hoping that the anti-magic serum had managed to do something to the wood, I went for the garbage disposal, which was decidedly closer and easier for me to reach than the window. Plus the water was still running from when they’d used it on Kol, so I didn’t have to waste time turning it on. 

The blades started whirling and made the most god awful sound as I shoved the stake down into them. I might’ve been imagining it, but I thought that the stake dropped ever so slightly in the fraction of a second that I had before Jeremy’s reflection in the window made me grab a heavy wooden chopping board near the sink. Turning, I used it to whack him in the head when he lunged at me, and then put chopping board on top of the stake to weigh it down as I moved to the side. A quick kick to his stomach as he started to stand upright, and I successfully grabbed his attention enough that I was able to start luring him away from the sink, but I didn’t know how long that would work. Thankfully, I had back up, because that’s roughly around the time the front door exploded inwards. 

I don’t know what Klaus threw to make it do that, but it was loud, and his onslaught didn’t stop there. Even I ducked at the sound of the front windows shattering, because whatever shrapnel he threw made it all the way over to this side of the house. A few seconds later, the back kitchen windows received the same treatment as the ones at the front had, and Jeremy grabbed Elena, who was trying to find something to use to wipe her eyes, since she couldn’t wash them out with the water from the tap. He pulled her towards the stairs, but I didn’t go with them. Staying low to the ground, I went to Kol and picked him up under the arms to start dragging him to the back kitchen doors. 

I got him there and saw Klaus standing in wait by them. He was anxious as I reached for the lock, and then something caught his attention from the front of the house, so I looked in that direction too. “Shit.” Bonnie hurried in through the front door yelling for my sister, and there was nothing I could do about her, so I went back to trying to unlock the door. 

“Bonnie, stop her!” 

I managed to get the door open before I was again picked up and flung across the room, but this time, there weren’t hands doing it. I landed shouting, “Bonnie, no!” and just got to my feet before my blurry-eyed sister came vampire sprinting through the other entryway into the kitchen with a crossbow. My gun with wooden bullets was still in my hand. Bonnie, Elena, Bonnie, Elena. I only had a split second to decide who to defend myself against. Who was the bigger threat? As it turned out, both. I received a bolt from the crossbow to the shoulder and an irritated Bonnie flinging me out the kitchen window above the sink a whole lot faster than it would’ve taken me to open it the normal way.

I hit the ground outside hard, a bit of a mess, but I wasn’t done yet. Getting up, I stumbled back around to the door where Klaus was, heard him yell in pain as his bones snapped and as his leg gave out. I knew Bonnie was responsible, but also figured that if her magical focus was on him, I could just move around him to reach across the threshold and grab his brother. I got my fingers around the material of Kol’s jacket and started to pull, but he was ripped away from me and the door magically slammed shut before I could get him more than a couple of inches. There wasn't time for me to go around to the front door, and there really wasn't enough time for me to even smash my way in through the glass panels of the door in front of me. Without really thinking it through, I kept my eyes on Kol and said, “Throw me back in there or use me as collateral for an exchange, whichever one you think has a better chance of working.”

Guess he was as dubious as I was that they’d actually want me back. With a guttural growl, Klaus pushed himself up from his knees, picked me up by the back of my jacket, and I had just enough time to cover my head with my arms for protection before I went crashing through the back door, like a cannonball. I landed roughly on top of Kol. My gun was still grasped tightly in my hand, so as I uncurled my arms, one hand covertly went to the dagger in Kol’s chest. With the other I aimed first at Elena’s knee, pulled the trigger, then Jeremy’s knee, and pulled the trigger. I'd say it worked well as a distraction from the fact that I'd pulled the dagger out of Kol's heart, but that’s all I was able to do before I was once again flung out the room by unseen powers. 

As I discretely put the dagger inside my jacket, I glanced from Kol to the door while Bonnie went to help the other two. He was so close to it and yet so far. I was going to have to distract them long enough for him to wake up and defend himself or get the hell out of here, but I’d taken considerable damage in the last couple of minutes. At this point, they couldn’t be doing this for any other reason than to cure Klaus. Maybe it hadn’t started out that way. Maybe it’d been to get the cure to make Klaus leave them alone, and they'd planned to just say it was an accident or self-defense if he suspected it was intentional, but over the course of the 5 minutes or so that I'd been here, that had changed, because Klaus was here too. They knew he had seen or heard everything, and they thought this was the only way to protect themselves. Curing him was something that Elena had already considered anyway, so it’d really just been solidified in her mind as the only option now, and since I was sure that her mind is the one that had concocted this entire scenario, the others would continue to follow her lead. 

I could let them killing Finn go, because they hadn’t known what would happen to Finn’s sire line, but this time they did. In fact, it’s why they were trying to kill Kol, and Finn couldn’t have had anywhere close to as many vampires in his line as Kol had. Kol probably had more than Elijah, Finn, and Rebekah did combined. The lives that would be lost, whether they were vampires or not, were a horrifying amount, and nobody trying to kill Kol was doing it for anyone other than themselves and a very small, select group of people. Then there was the issue with Silas. As long as they got what they wanted, then fuck the world, I guess.

It was my most difficult challenge to date, because if they were anyone else, they’d be dead right now. I’d had numerous chances to do it, but they weren’t anyone else, so I was pulling my punches and trying to do the least amount of damage possible even if they couldn’t see that. Using the wall for support, I got to my feet as somebody in the other room turned off the garbage disposal. “What are we supposed to do with this now?”

That sounded promising. “You could try shoving it up your ass to keep the stick that’s already up there company, Elena.” 

Long aggravated pause, and I heard her say much quieter, “I thought it was supposed to be indestructible.”

Leaning against the wall, I tried to figure out the best way back into the kitchen with Bonnie guarding the entrances, and casually said, “There are ways to fix that.”

Coming around the corner in a huff, Elena quickly stopped short, and I stretched my arms out with a smirk. “Soak it all in, dear sister, this is your handiwork.”

“Me?!”

“Yeah, you . . . You’re the one calling the shots around here, and I don’t remember biting myself . . . That’s something my Mom never did by the way . . . Neither has Damon. Neither has Klaus for that matter.”

Her shoulders fell somewhat. Pointing back to the spot where I’d attacked her, she started to say, “You – “

“I know what I did, and I would have snapped your neck too the first chance I got, but I also know that you are a vampire and can take it. Have I staked you though? Because that’s just a step too far in a fight between sisters, don’t you think?” Glancing down at my shoulder, I said, “Oh yeah, you shot me too.” The part of the bolt that hadn’t been broken off in my tumbles was still sticking out of me, and I lightly tapped it before saying, “That’s pretty damn close to staking me, so maybe not.”

“You just shot me, and you’ve shot Jeremy twice.”

I looked back up at her. “You’ll both heal exceptionally fast. You don’t even have a limp, and he’ll be fine in an hour. Let’s keep this at no harm, no foul . . . Give Kol back to his brother.”

“We can’t just – “

I needed to try a different approach. Tossing her a little wave, I interrupted whatever she’d been about to say. “Hi, Elena.”

The randomness seemed to have thrown her off. “Hi?”

“I’m the voice of reason. It’s time we meet.” She rolled her eyes and half turned away from me. “I’m not going to get into how you lied to me about how you were going to let me handle this, and I won’t remind Bonnie that Imelda told her she’d only train her if she didn’t use her powers again, so that’s not happening unless she stops right now. I’m not going to talk about how I shouldn’t have to tell you that killing Kol in order to wipe out his entire line is wrong, and I’m not going to say that doing more harm than good by committing mass genocide and then traipsing into Silas’s lair to get his cure and letting him out because you want protect a very small number of people puts you in the running for worst villain of the year. What I am going to do is tell you that it’s not too late to back down. What you’re trying to do will take this from being a cold war to a full one nuclear one, and it doesn’t need to happen. You’re letting fear guide you, and that is never a winning strategy. Let Kol go, and you have a chance of de-escalating this. Anything less, and there’s a high probability that the very people you are trying to protect will die.” 

“And who are you trying to protect? Because it certainly isn’t your family.”

“I am even if you can’t see it, but my family aren’t the only people on this planet . . . And you’re doing it again, by the way - asking me to choose you or saving people, and I am once again telling you that my answer is both, but if you persist, then it’ll become me having to save an untold number of people from you, and that changes things.”

“What are you saying?”

“I guess I’m saying that . . . Siblings are raised together. They share experiences. It’s them against their parents and the world . . . Most of the time those are bonds that can be stretched to breaking point without ever really being broken. I see it around me every single day, so I know what it should look like, and you and I don’t have that, not yet anyway. Despite what you said to Damon about me being family, it was framed in the context of me being family solely because I protect you no matter what, and I do that because the idea of you is what kept me going when I was growing up. It makes my bond to you strong . . . I can forgive a lot. I have forgiven a lot or am in the process of trying to do it, and I am willing to die to protect you even now, but there are some things that you could do that I will not forgive, and this is one of them. That bond will have been stretched too far, and it will break.”

Looking to the side, she nodded, while she considered it, and I almost thought I’d gotten through. “Maybe you’re right . . . Maybe it will, but – “

“Little Ghost.” The instant he said my name, I simply dropped to the ground. I knew as well as he did that nothing productive would’ve come out of her mouth after the word ‘but.’ I also knew that he had moved during the course of my discussion with Elena, so I wasn’t entirely surprised to hear his voice coming from behind me, and I knew that while the heads up he'd given was more than he would’ve given to almost anyone else, if I hadn’t heeded it, nothing would have stopped him from doing what he did. Whatever projectile he threw went rocketing over my head from the direction of the front door. Elena’s arm shot out to stop it, and whatever it was went right through her hand and still embedded itself in Bonnie’s neck. She started bleeding and choking, but she’d be fine with a little bit of vampire blood, and Elena went to help her. I grabbed Kol’s foot to drag him to the front door and had just gotten him clear of the hallway when I saw movement out of the corner of my right eye. 

Kicking my leg out to the side, I connected with Jeremy’s wounded knee, and he fell to the ground. I saw a little mini-stake in his hand. It wasn’t as wide at the top as it had been, but it did have a point at the other end, a new tip, because it’d been pared down to this size after they’d managed to pull a block of wood about the width of a hand in length out of the garbage disposal. That’s what Jeremy had been doing while Elena was talking to me, so I guess my sister had been providing a distraction too. 

I grappled with him for it, which was easier said than done. He was a lot stronger than me now, and my arm had been weakened from the arrow poking through it, which is what he used against me, much the same way I had Alec, the first time I met him. Okay, it really fucking hurt as he pinned me to the ground with it, and after a sharp cry of pain, I gritted out, “Alec, if you are telling him to do that right now, I fucking swear . . . ” and Jeremy stopped. Completely let go of the bolt and held up his hands as he got to his knees to get off of me. 

Just me mentioning Alec, must’ve made Jeremy think of him, and Alec must’ve been pushing hard to be heard from the Other Side. I quickly looked around for my unseen partner. “Alec?” In a rush, I sat up saying, “Alec, he won’t listen to me. Tell him,” at the same time that Elena shouted, “Jeremy!” from the doorway into the kitchen where she was pinned down by Klaus hurling more missiles in she and Bonnie’s direction. 

Jeremy looked genuinely conflicted. He had three voices in his head at the same time, and in that brief moment of hesitation on his part, I dove for his hand. The mini-stake was literally at my fingertips. I started to pull it free of his loosened fist, and then wound up wrenching his wrist to make him let go of it after he reflexively tightened his grip on it. I was aware of that hurting him and of a very angry Bonnie’s voice as she emerged from behind Elena in the hallway to face Klaus again. “Elena, do something, or I’m gonna break her scrawny little neck.” Ignoring her, I mostly focused on finally getting the mini-stake out of Jeremy’s grasp when I was picked up and shoved into a wall near the door. My grip on the stake wasn’t tight enough to keep me from dropping it on impact, and Elena kicked it back towards her brother yelling, “Jeremy, now!”

She had her forearm to my neck to keep me in place, and I didn’t have a whole lot of space to move, so I brought my knee up between her legs as hard as I would for any male vampire, because that absolutely hurt girls too, and she briefly doubled over. I shoved her forearm off of me and started to go around her to get to Jeremy, but by then, it was too late. I heard Klaus yelling, “NOOO!” at the same time a little flame burst out of Kol’s chest, and it momentarily took the fight right out of me, but it definitely intensified the fight in Klaus. I sort of tuned him out as I sunk to my knees and watched Kol burn. About the only good thing I could think of in that moment was that hopefully Kol was still unconscious enough for it not to hurt, but I was fairly certain that was wrong. He just couldn’t move or scream, but he could feel it all, couldn’t he?

I watched Jeremy laboriously get to his feet. Elena went to him. Klaus was ranting in the doorway. Bonnie was . . . well, she was saying, “Invite him in.” That couldn’t be good. I quickly looked from her to Jeremy to Klaus.

“Don’t fall for – “

“You’re invited in.” 

The invisible barrier dropped. Klaus was gone from the doorway in a flash. The others were running around in the house to get away from him. “Might as well be on the Other Side with you, Alec.” As soon as I uttered those words, I had the strangest feeling. Looking down at my uninjured shoulder in confusion, I asked, “Am I losing my mind, or are you touching me right now?” It went away, and the feeling of defeat in my chest returned 10-fold . . . except it wasn’t just defeat that I felt. It was a deep sense of betrayal that was growing with every second that ticked closer to the impending doom that couldn’t be stopped for the tens of thousands who would never see it coming, and maybe Alec knew I was a ticking time bomb and was concerned enough about it that I could feel his vibes from across the veil. 

Looking down at my chest, I briefly wondered if he was right to be worried, because I certainly felt something stirring in there as my inner righteous anger began to merge with the very thing designed to punish just this kind of wickedness. A few moments later, the others were back minus the one that’d been chasing them. They were heading for the door when Elena dropped down in front of me to try and get me to my feet, so she could drag me out the door with them. 

My head remained bowed as I ignored her and tried to keep myself in check. I couldn’t let this thing inside me off its leash. I had no idea what would happen if I did. “She made her choice. Leave her.”

Elena’s head snapped in Bonnie’s direction. “No, we can’t just leave her here like this.” 

Coming up beside her, Jeremy added, “We have to at least take her to the hospital.” 

At that, I exhaled a contemptuous laugh at their willingness to apparently just move on from the atrocities they’d just committed. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” 

“Look, I know Alec said it was a bad idea too, but we really didn’t have a choice. We have to get that cure now.”

I felt a hardening of the ice in my chest, and without looking up, I tilted my head to the side just a little in Jeremy’s direction. “A lie you’ll all tell yourselves in perpetuity to convince yourselves you were right.” 

At that, Bonnie stepped back into the room. “Uh, guys . . . “

Whatever she could feel or see, Elena either didn’t or ignored it, because the next words out of her mouth were, “How is it any different than you letting Kol kill those vampires at the lake house,” and aside from there being a massive difference in the numbers killed, I could’ve said it was all down to intent. I’d done that to save the people who would be killed if Silas was raised. She did it to protect Jeremy and her friends because she didn’t want to lose them, but also because she wanted that damn cure for herself. Nobody knew how much of it there was. I thought it was probably a very small amount considering it was made for one person, but there might well be enough for her and Klaus, and that’s all she was thinking about in all of this. She certainly wasn’t being a champion of vampires who hated being vampires all across the land considering a big chunk of them were about to die. Her worldview revolved entirely around herself. I could’ve said that, but I was done explaining myself to her or getting into these arguments that seemed designed to entirely shift the blame onto someone else instead of her taking responsibility for her own actions. 

I slowly lifted my head to take her in with avenging eyes, but before she could back away from me, I’d dropped the stake up my sleeve, grabbed her by the shoulder, and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop me from driving it up into her chest, because in that moment, my curse and I had merged into one vengeful being. It flowed through me and out of me and was amplified to the point that when my peripheral vision caught sight of Bonnie’s hand moving to throw me, nothing happened. The ever evolving, dark magic entity that I housed had apparently learned enough from her last attack on me that it was ready for it this time and was as powerful as Imelda said it was if it could now shield me from Expression when an Original Hybrid didn’t stand a chance against it. Probably didn’t hurt that it was getting an additional power boost from my life force in that moment too, because the curse and I were in complete agreement for once.

Jeremy grabbed me by the shoulder at some point and immediately reeled back at the instant frost burn he suffered, and Elena, herself, was beginning to freeze, not just at the point of contact where my hand met her shoulder, but a layer of ice moved its way up the stake that was embedded in her chest. It hadn’t punctured her heart, but it was certainly resting against it as she choked and wheezed and begged me to stop. Then out of the midst of the frozen winds from the 9th Circle being brought to life all around us, the shouting, the crying, and my deafness to all of it, there was a single voice that broke through. “Eve . . . Eve, sweetheart, look at me.” The gentleness tinged with concern in that voice made my eyes flit towards the living room where Klaus was apparently being held. “Think of Damon.” Damon? I blinked, and he said, “Focus on him and fight it . . . You don’t want to be lost to him forever.” 

Wait. Could that happen? No. No, I didn’t want that. I didn’t want that at all. I blinked again before looking back at Elena and quickly let go of her. As soon as I did, I went flying back against the nearest wall. Not really sure that pinning me to it was necessary. I wasn’t going to do that again. I did have a pretty good view up there of the ice that’d formed on the floor around where I’d been kneeling though. Jeremy removed the stake from Elena, and he and Bonnie helped her out the door. A few moments later, I fell to the ground and struggled to get back up. 

By the time I got to the door, they were gone, but they weren’t who I wanted to see just then. What the hell did I just do should probably be at the top of my list of concerns, but to be completely honest, I think the thing that I’d been trying to bury the most knocked it down a spot and blocked out all the rest. I needed to see Alice, but when I tried to cross the threshold, it would appear that I couldn’t.


	61. Last Dance

I didn’t want to leave Kol where he was, but I also didn’t know what the respectful thing to do with him was. He hadn’t burned to ash, like his father, which really just went to confirm for me how bad his father had actually been, but he was still pretty crispy. Couldn’t really identify him as him anymore. If he was human, he certainly wouldn’t be getting an open casket, but he’d still get some kind of a wake, wouldn’t he? 

Looking from his corpse to the less formal living room across from the one where Klaus had been imprisoned, I went to it and started moving the couch. I got it through the doorway, turned back to Kol, then let my eyes flick to Klaus. “May I?”

Tearing his eyes from his brother, he looked to the side with glassy eyes and nodded, so I went to Kol and picked him up under the arms. He somehow felt so much lighter now that the life had been snuffed out of him. I got him on the couch and situated him, so he’d look more comfortable. I didn’t think it was my place to say any words, because I hadn’t known him well enough to have the right to say anything, so I settled for patting him lightly on the chest in a comforting gesture before going up the stairs to rip Elena’s sheets off her bed. Carrying them back down, I covered Kol and then went to find flowers. There were some fake flowers in a vase, so I took them, then threw the vase over my shoulder and felt quite satisfied with the sound of it smashing to pieces behind me. 

Bringing the flowers back, I put them on Kol’s chest and then looked at Klaus again. “Do you want him with you?” That time, he did look at me, and the emotion there was so raw that it made my heart feel like it’d stopped for a moment. A subtle nod, and I started pushing his brother into his room and put him in a place across from a sofa that was already in there, then went back to the kitchen. Opening cabinets, I searched for something that felt dignified. Glasses were thrown haphazardly over my shoulder until I found a suitable looking tumbler. Setting it aside, I looked for some alcohol and eventually grabbed every bottle of beer, liquor, and wine I could find before I went to deposit everything on a table next to the sofa in the nicer living room. Then I left Klaus in there to grieve his brother. I didn’t go far. There were two entryways into that room. One from the kitchen and the other near the front door. I sat along the wall near the front entryway and waited for Alice to come.

I’d called her using Elena’s house phone, because mine was either still charging in its holder in my car or Klaus had it, and I didn’t want to ask him for anything right now. She hadn’t answered. Probably busy ordering parts on-line for her car or potentially even working on the car herself since I’d gone out for the evening, and she’d taken an interest in watching how I did it the last few days. She might feel more confident in trying it now when she was alone. I was starting to feel the urgency of her not being here, and I’d done the only task I could think of doing to take my mind off of it. 

I could call Damon, but I didn’t know what to say to him. Hopefully, he’d found a way to keep Matt from telling anyone that he’d seen him and everyone else still thought he was locked in that cell in the basement. I needed him out there fighting the good fight and coming up with something underhanded to stop the others more than I needed him to be here, not that I didn’t need him. Of course I did, but there’s nothing he could really do to fix anything that had happened, so preventing a dead monster invasion was more of a priority right now than him providing me with any sort of comfort. If he was still following Stefan and Rebekah, then I should have enough time to focus on how to break the news to Alice and help her find peace before I had to call him . . . just needed Alice to get here. I’d said it was an emergency. Hopefully, she got the message. Time was running out.

Bringing my knees to my chest, I rested my head on them, and tried to quiet my mind. Unfortunately, it looked like I had a new empty playlist to start. There’d never been any music playing when I was around Kol. Obviously the last song I heard before all of this happened would be going on Klaus’s playlist. 

If I was at home, what would I be playing right now? I preferred the full band version because of the punch it had when the band kicked in all at once, but I also quite liked the piano version of _The Funeral_ from Band of Horses. I couldn’t play it in a conventional sense, because this house didn’t have a single instrument in it, but I could play on an imaginary keyboard. I’d used one enough times after the Great Keyboard Purge. Didn’t even need to move from my position. I could just play it as if it were a keyboard running under my bent knees on the floor. 

It was the only way I knew to ground myself, but it was a tether that was weakening by the minute as my anxiety started to rise. Starting over again, I quietly hummed the opening verse this time. 

“Eve?! I came as soon as I got your message. I was - oh my word!”

I looked up, and there she was, my whimsical mermaid, standing in the doorway. She got a little blurry, but I blinked it away and shoved aside any sadness at the sight of her that I felt. That wouldn’t help her find peace, and helping her achieve that was the only task that mattered right now. “Hey, Alice . . . how’s the car?”

She was over to me in a flash, and her face fell as she crouched down in front of me. “Oh, would you look at you. Where are your pills from Imelda?”

“My room.”

She started to stand. “I’ll go – “

“I don’t want them.”

Her shoulders fell as she stopped to look down at me. “What about the pills Damon gave you?”

“I don’t want those either.”

Slumping more, she asked, “Hospital?”

“Can’t.”

Crouching back down in front of me, she asked, “Why are you acting the way you were the night you died? Are you trying to make a point of showing how broken you think you are again, because you’re not broken, Eve . . . You’re strong. You’re kind. You’re brave. You protect those who need it the most no matter who they are . . . If you were weak, cruel, a coward, and only thought of yourself, then you would be broken, but you’re not . . . I wish you thought more of yourself and realized how important your life is, but maybe that’ll come with age.” 

She got a little blurry again, and I blinked it away before giving her a sad smile. “Nothing like that this time, Alice, but thanks.”

Placing her hand on my chin to turn my head to the side so she could see my neck, she asked, “Who did this?” Finally seeing my shoulder, she muttered, “Oh for Nature’s sake. You have things poking out of you . . . What happened?”

“Elena and I had a fight.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh no.“

“She’s fine.” 

“I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

“I did.”

“Did you start it?”

“I’d say she did. She’d probably say I did.”

“Well, then I’m sure it’s all just a big misunderstanding. Come on, we’ll get you out of here and on the mend. Then you can find her, and I’m sure you two will have it talked out in no time.”

At her optimism, I exhaled a sad laugh. I needed to get started, and this was probably as good a place to start as any. “I’d rather talk to you . . . about Ada.”

Sitting back on her heels, she shook her head. “Now isn’t the time – “

There was no other time than now. “Do you want me to do something about my injuries, or not?”

“You can really be wretched when you want to be.”

I couldn’t allow myself to be dissuaded this time. “She was your sister, wasn’t she . . . younger?” Looking like the air had been sucked out of her lungs, she gave me a quick teary nod. Yeah, after what happened with Alec, I hadn’t wanted to look at it too closely, but I guess I’d known that on some level for a while. That's why I continued asking about it every so often without really pushing her on it. “Thought so . . . It’s why you’re always so focused on Elena and I being sisters, and I’ve never felt what it’s like to have a big sister yell at me, but I imagine it’s probably pretty close to the way it was after I scared you when you were driving me to the hospital that night.” 

That actually made her give me a sad smile. “Tensions were running high . . . It was really quite funny looking back at it now. I’m sure she would’ve responded the way you did to me telling her to mind her language too.”

I was so glad now that I’d apologized to her for that. “Earlier that night, you said that you’d realized I remind you of someone . . . It was her?”

She looked up and to the side as her eyes got dewy again. Blinking the water away, she said, “I was so scared of you when we met because of all the visions Josef had of you that I didn’t see it at first, but I should have when I asked you why you didn’t kill me, and you said that it was because you hadn’t liked the way he treated me. That’s not a reason to spare someone who had done the things I did. It’s something you think when you want to save them, and that’s what you did. You saved me from him, because despite what I’d done, you knew I needed help and could be saved. It had been so long since I’d had anyone believe in me, let alone get me out of trouble that I couldn’t get out of myself, that I couldn’t place why it felt familiar at first, and I’m ashamed to say it’s because I hadn’t allowed myself to think about Ada in so long . . . She was younger than me by a few years, but she was always my little protector . . . such a fighter, and she always believed in me too. I was fearless then, but she’s the reason I could be, and we were inseparable. Everywhere I went, she went with me, and any time I got us into trouble, she got us out of it . . . until I finally got myself into so much trouble that there was nothing she could do.”

“And it got her killed. That’s why you flipped your switch for 300 years?”

Finally taking a seat on the floor, she sighed. “They were something new back then . . . I knew I should stay away from them the first moment that I saw them, but I was drawn to Kol. He was much better looking than the other men in our village, so maybe that was a factor, but he was also fun and witty, and he was well traveled and smart. He was charming with all the ladies, but that veneer went away when he was with me, and he and I became friends . . . Losing his ability to perform magic really upset him, and I was sure that even if he couldn’t perform magic anymore, he must still have psychic abilities, because I’ve always thought that all witches are psychic to some degree, but not all psychics are witches. He told me about compulsion, so I said that was his psychic ability showing through, but he said his siblings could all do it as well. Not all of them had been witches. No obvious psychic abilities had manifested before they turned either."

Bowing her head in embarrassment, she said, "Eventually, something I’d said to make him feel better became something of an on-going debate between us, and since I was definitely both a witch and a psychic, I wondered what would happen if I became what he was . . . I knew what it was like to be a witch, and it was wonderful, but if it could dampen or eliminate my psychic abilities, it might not be so bad, and I have to admit that being young, I thought the idea of living forever was appealing . . . I suppose that even then, I didn’t think to look at the darkness of it all. I just wanted to see what would happen."

When she looked at me, I nodded to let her know I understood. "I do like my experiments too, don't I?"

She gave me a soft smile of appreciation before saying, "I suppose you do . . . mind you I never threw any grenades in the house."

"That's because they didn't exist back then." Before we got too distracted, I steered us back to the important conversation we needed to have. "And Ada . . . how did she take it?"

Dipping her head, she sadly nodded before saying, "She was livid. She confronted them at the community bonfire without really understanding anything about them. She didn’t have the gift the way I did, so how could she have known more than what I’d told her, which wasn’t nearly enough. They mocked her anger and the fact that she thought she could stand up to them. She had a reputation as a terrible dancer . . . The community loved her for it, because even though she was just awful and had no rhythm whatsoever, she did it with such careless abandon that it brought joy to everyone . . . or that's what I'd always thought."

"You had more of a hand in their perception than you realized because of your psychic abilities, but with those being altered after you turned, their real opinions came out that night?" 

Alice’s expression cracked, and she looked at me again with teary eyes as she nodded. “To show her why she should fear them, they decided that she should dance until she’d learned to do it properly. They compelled her, and looks the other girls gave her, not everyone, but enough, they were awful and judgmental . . . and the terrible things some of them muttered under their breath . . . It was horrible, and the worst part is that at first I laughed right along with Kol and Klaus . . . I was annoyed with her. My emotions were all over the place. I was scared after what I’d done and embarrassed. and she was making it worse, so I thought it was funny to see her being put in her place . . . until her toes became bloodied, and she started to look so tired . . . I begged them to stop, but they didn’t."

With a small sniff, she paused as she looked down again. "I attacked them right there in front of everyone, and Elijah carried me away . . . Klaus told him to kill me, but something stopped him . . . I suppose it could’ve been pity, or the way the winds picked up and the clouds above us starting to swirl, because I can remember him looking up at them in awe. I used him doing that to try and run back, but he caught me again and compelled me to go, never return, and never cross paths with his family again. That wore off one day, but it was 75 years later, and I didn’t care. I’d found my switch on my own and shut it all off, because my sister, the most important person in the world to me, died, and one of the last things she ever got to see was me laughing at her.”

“She didn’t die that day.” Alice’s teary eyes widened as she looked in the direction of the darkened room next to us. It wasn't really a surprise she hadn’t known Klaus was in there. He’d turned off the lights at some point. “Elijah came back and wanted to put an end to it. Finn joined him. We put it to a vote, and Kol was the deciding vote. He agreed to undo the compulsion if it meant his new toy could come back to play. It wasn’t until after he’d undone the compulsion that Elijah said you were dead, and then we moved on from there, leaving your sister very much alive.” 

I didn’t know how much of that was actually true. Almost all of it except that Kol was told that Alice was dead could be an absolute fabrication, but if it was, then it was one of the kindest things I’d witnessed anyone do for someone else, let alone Klaus, particularly if it was to ease some of Alice’s burden on a deathbed she didn’t know she was on yet and given everything he must be going through personally right now. 

Of course, it might all be true. Kol had asked if I knew the full story, and if it was true, then it was still kind of Klaus to say it, but also very sad, because Alice had suffered for 1000 years over something that hadn’t happened the way she’d thought. She’d also missed out on being able to spend years longer with her sister, and I actually felt a little sorry for Kol. No wonder he’d been hurt that his friend Alice was now my friend Alice, and she hated him for something that hadn’t happened. I mean, he’d bullied her sister, but he hadn’t killed her sister if what Klaus said was true, and the whole story made Elijah a problematic truth teller. 

He’d heard rumors she could manipulate the weather? Nah, he saw her do it, and Kol hadn’t left her broken. That was sort of on all of them. It was on Kol for picking on her kid sister; Klaus for probably egging him on with his own mean-spirited mocking of the poor girl; and the others for allowing it. Then Elijah dragged Alice away, compelled her to leave the only life she’d ever known, and she never got to find out that her sister hadn’t died until now. 

Unsure of whether she should believe Klaus, Alice asked, “Then why did he send me away?”

“The last thing we wanted was to draw attention to ourselves, and you very nearly exposed us to your entire community when you attacked Kol. If Elijah wasn’t going to kill you the way I told him to do, then you couldn’t stay there, and you couldn’t come with us.” Reigning in the tinge of anger in his voice, he added, “You and Kol were both tearaways from what I recall. We had enough difficulty keeping Kol in check on his own.” After a bit of a pause, he asked a frustrated, “Are you going to tell her, or shall I?”

My brow furrowed in confusion at him getting involved in any of this. It was clear he was on a roller coaster of emotions right now with good reason. Maybe he needed a task to take his mind off of his brother, or maybe he wanted to clean up the memory of his brother. Maybe he just wanted the two of us to shut the hell up, so he could get back to his brother’s wake. Maybe it was something else entirely. I didn’t know, and to be honest, I couldn’t let myself think on it long, because this wasn’t his moment. It was hers, so she is where my focus needed to be. “I’m working up to it.”

“Work faster.”

“I know.” The clock was ticking. 

Watching me, Alice asked, “Do you need me to do something?”

“You wanna try blowing this house down with a tornado? I’m dying to see it.” She laughed, but I was sort of serious. If we were trapped between 4 walls, then what happened when those walls were no longer there, and I’d really wanted to see her use that power, but now I didn’t think I ever would. This wasn’t about me though, so I let it go and said, “Okay, I’ll settle for you telling me what else Ada liked to do other than dance badly?”

Alice looked to side as she finally let herself start remembering more about her sister after close to 1000 years of shutting those memories out because of the grief and guilt they caused. Smiling, she answered, “You and she would’ve been great friends. She liked to fish and hunt game . . . It wasn’t something girls did, but Papa used to take her with him. Mama accused him of treating her like the son they never had, but she allowed it, because every time he left when we were younger, Ada would be so sad that I’d sneak her away from the house, and we’d show up wherever he was anyway. At least if he took her with him, it left me with Mama, and there was less chance of us being attacked by bears or wolves along the way.”

“What do you think she did with her life?”

“Without me to mind, she might’ve found someone. She would’ve made an excellent mother, and maybe she became one of the elders. She was always wise beyond her years, so people were always going to her for advice . . . You’re good at research. Do you think you could help me find out what became of her?”

She looked at me with such hope that I had to clear the lump in my throat before saying, “I think you’ll have all the answers you could ever want about her before you know it.”

“Oh, I hope so. This is wonderful news. She went by Ada, but her name was Adalfrit if that helps. I can tell you more when we get home . . . That is if you’re ready for me to get you something to make you better now.”

“Not quite . . . Help me up?” She nodded before taking my hands, and I was on my feet before I knew it. Walking stiffly to the kitchen, I started going through the drawers, found some candles, and a carton of ice cream. Bringing everything to a counter, I stuck 10 candles into the ice cream before pulling out a lighter. Once the wicks were lit, I shoved it in her direction saying, “I’ve been thinking about it since our intervention night . . . If you include your years as a human, you’re turning 1000 this year. That’s a big deal, and I think it should be celebrated. I was planning to have a party for it, but we might as well do it now, because I want you to have your presents, and they can’t wait. Here’s 10 candles . . . 1 for every 100 years. I want you to reflect on them, make a wish, and blow them out.” 

Giving me a crooked smile, she said, “This is all very strange,” before pausing a beat to do a mini-reflection and then held her hair back as she leaned down to blow out her candles.

“You made a wish?”

She nodded, and I said, “Okay, here is your first present. I know Silas was a monster from your childhood, and I can promise you that you will not have to deal with him, so if your Papa was right when he said that good girls need not fear Silas, then I guess you must be a better girl than you think.” 

She exhaled a laugh. “That would be a most excellent present, Eve. Thank you.”

“Oh, I’m not done yet. While I remind you of your sister and consider it an honor that I do, I am not your sister, and no substitute will ever be as good as the real thing. For your second present, and the one I think might be related to your wish, I promise that you will not only be finding out more about your sister very soon, but you will be hearing it from her as long as you remember that I am not her, and that I will be okay.”

Catching the slightly more somber tone in my voice towards the end, she nodded hesitantly, and I said, “And for your third present, I can’t get you the cure, but I’m going to remind you how it feels to be a human, and you’ll be able to live each moment of life to its fullest for – “ looking at my watch, my breath caught in my chest, and I looked at her to say, “The next 5 minutes.”

“How – “

There was no easy way to say this, but quick, like a ripping off a band-aid, was what I tried to do. “Alice, Kol is dead. You were knocked out when Sage got there, but I know you know what happened to her after Finn died.” 

What I’d said didn’t register at first, and yet it did. She knew that I wasn’t joking. I wouldn’t do that on something this serious. I waited for her to swim herself to the top of whatever wave of numbness or emotions had crashed over her, and the second she broke through to the surface, she gasped and grabbed onto the counter, like she needed it for support as her legs gave out a bit. I went to catch her, and she threw her arms around me in a quiet sob. 

Mindful of the arrow in my shoulder, I was a little concerned that she might have impaled herself on it, but it looked like our height difference had prevented that from happening, and to keep it from happening, I kept that arm down by my side, while I wrapped the other one around her and quietly said, “Hey, it’s gonna be okay. I did die, so I know that vampire or human, we continue on in some form. You’re just saying goodbye to me, so you can say hello to your sister, and I need you to go to her, because she is waiting for you. I don’t want you stuck on the Other Side. You don’t have any unfinished business here. You’ve completed your journey. It took a long time for you to get there, but you made it. I’m really proud of you for being able to reclaim so much of who you are, and to do it after this long with the trials you’ve faced? That makes you remarkable, and I want you to know that who you are is good . . . Do you understand anything I’m saying?”

She choked out another sob but gave me a slight nod, and I took a shaky breath before saying, “So what do you want to do in your last 5 minutes?”

“Make them less scary?”

“I’ll try.” Pushing back from her, I handed her the ice cream saying, “Let’s start with this.” I grabbed a couple of spoons from a drawer and handed her one. She took a big scoop, and shoveled it into her mouth. Better that than my neck if she was craving some kind of sustenance for comfort, but I still exhaled a laugh. Looking around us for something to do, I said, “Caroline’s better at this kind of thing than me. She would’ve planned an amazing death day party in a matter of minutes. Um . . . quick game of _Pictionary_?”

“Truth be told, the entire convention was a delight, the best night I’ve had in centuries, and I loved playing _Pictionary_ , but I probably had even more fun in our homemade night club.“

Then, I was doubly glad that I’d thrown that convention. “Well, we are sending you off to see your sister . . . Might as well get some bad dancing in to commemorate her while we’re at it.” It wouldn’t really go against reminding her how it felt to be human if she used her vampire speed, would it? That was more about a feeling than pretending she wasn’t a vampire anymore. “Think you could vampire sprint out to my car to see if my phone is out there?” 

Taking another big bite of ice cream, she nodded before reluctantly leaving the tub on the counter and was gone in a flash. She was back a few seconds later holding my phone, and I flicked through it until I found a song that seemed right. _Last Dance_ by the Raveonettes was kind of perfect even if it was a little on the nose. Turning it on as loud as possible, I set it on the counter and waited to see her reaction to it.

_Your lipstick  
Is smeared sad  
I adore you  
I always have _

Pointing her spoon at my phone, she said, “I remember this from the convention. I said it’s the happiest sad song.” 

I smiled with a nod and held my hand out to her. She reluctantly took it, and I lifted our hands above our heads, so we could twirl under them on the last two lines of the first verse.

_Another sad stare  
Before you disappear_

At the chorus we let go of one another, and I tried not to wince as I hopped up and down with her. If I did, she didn’t seem to notice, because by then, she was starting to let dancing distract her from her impending death if even for a moment, and that is what it meant to be human, or at least that was a big part of it, so I suppose I did fulfill that part of my death day promise to her. 

_If this is the last dance, this is the last dance  
Then, save it for me baby  
If this is the last dance, this is the last dance  
Then, save it for me baby_

By the end of the chorus, I kind of had to take a break and leaned against the counter to watch her go. She was twirling around with the carton of ice cream in one hand, a spoon in the other, and her eyes were closed. She’d come so far from being the woman I first saw in that attic that it made me tear up again, but the moment it looked like her eyes were about to open, I got back to my own dancing, because I did not want her worrying about me at all. I didn’t want to be the reason she didn’t find peace. The second time the chorus was about to start, she put the carton down, grabbed my hands, and we spun in a circle with the occasional twirl under the other one’s arm. This was supposed to be bad but fun dancing after all. She spun me out under her arm at one point near the end of the song, and I saw her stumble. 

Maybe it was just a stumble? No. Something was definitely wrong. I turned the song off, because I wanted her to hear what I had to say to her, and she reached for something to keep from falling. I caught her hand, but she went down anyway and pulled me down with her. She was starting to panic, so I pulled her into my lap. Resting her back against my chest, I wrapped my arms around her saying, “It’s okay. I’m here . . . I’m just handing you off to your sister. That’s all this is. She gets to look after you again. She must miss you so much . . . as much as you miss her. More even.” I felt her relax and looked down at her. The grey was making its way up her arms. Holding her a little tighter, I wasn’t sure if it was to comfort her or me as I whispered in her ear. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay, Adalhaidis. Go be with happy with Adalfrit.”


	62. Only Human

I held Alice for a little while after she was gone. I hoped she found peace. That’s the real gift I wanted her to have. Finally, wiping my face of the silent tears that marked them, I moved Alice off of me and settled her against the cabinet. I had nowhere to put her. I couldn’t leave her here on the floor. I couldn’t put her in with Kol and Klaus. 

The dining room where Imelda had almost died? I could put her on the table in there. I made my way to that room and found the door locked, so I shot the lock off to open it, then cleared the place mats on the table by swiping them onto the floor and went back to drag her in there. It was getting a lot harder for me to do much of anything, but what the hell else did I have to do with my time. Sit and think? Absolutely not.

I finally got her on the table and went through drawers until I found a nice table cloth and covered her with that. I’d sort of said everything I wanted to say to her, so I was about to leave when I heard her phone ringing behind me. I went back for it, saw Elena’s name pop up, and answered it without saying anything. _Alice? This is Elena . . . Um, I’m not sure where you are, but I was wondering if we could talk. I know you were with Eve when she hid Shane, and – “_

At that, I pulled the phone away from my ear and let it hang by my side as I made my way back towards the kitchen. Trying to manipulate poor, sweet, naïve Alice now were we? Lifting the phone back to my ear a few moments later, I interrupted whatever she was saying with, “Alice can’t come to the phone right now. She’s dead.”

_“Eve?”_

“The one and only.”

_“Did you – “_

“No, I didn’t kill her. Count her as one of the lives that just went into finishing that tattoo.”

There was a deafening silence after that. Finally, she said, _“Eve, I’m sorry. I didn’t know – “_

“You would have if you’d cared enough to find out, and I’m glad you didn’t know. It’d just give me one more reason to find you abhorrent, because it wouldn’t have changed anything. You still would’ve done it since she wasn’t one of your chosen people. Good luck finding Professor Snake, and know that I will get out of here, so all you have is a head start that’s dwindling fast. In the meantime, I’m going to destroy your house. There isn’t going to be anything left for you when you come back, and I’ll see you when you get wherever you’re going.”

Ending the call, I considered throwing the phone against a wall, and only didn’t, because it was Alice’s phone. Gripping it tightly, I put it in my jacket pocket and went to the kitchen counter to grab my phone. I needed to call Damon. I decided to do it from upstairs and dragged myself all the way up there, but he didn’t answer. I considered leaving a message, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that he’s the one who would get it if I left one. One of them might have taken his phone. 

I mean, I didn’t think they’d kill him, but torture him to find out if I’d told him where I’d put the professor? Elena and Jeremy? Even now, I’d say they wouldn’t do it themselves, but allow it? I wasn’t sure if Elena’s sire bond would let her do that, but who knew? What about Stefan? He wasn’t above staking Damon when they got into fights, and finding the cure meant a lot to him, so who knew? And Bonnie? Even if all she had was normal spirit magic, I could easily see her using her powers to give Damon vampire migraines until he told them what he knew, but I hadn’t told him, so he wouldn’t have anything to give them, and what if she did that leg snapping thing she’d done to Klaus? 

It'd brought the Original Hybrid to his knees. What would it do to Damon? Closing my eyes, I inhaled slowly through my nose and exhaled even slower through my mouth to stay calm. I should’ve called Damon before Alice got here, but my head was all over the place and nowhere at once. To get through it, I was only able to focus on one thing at a time. 

The task for Alice was sadly complete. The task for Damon . . . well, I’d been effectively imprisoned, and it was eating at me, but the reality was that there was nothing I could do about anything that might be happening to him. I had to trust that he had this under control and hadn’t been ambushed on his way back to his cell. Maybe to get past them, he’d had to turn his phone off. He was a vampire used to living a solitary life in the shadows. He knew how to get around without anyone knowing he was there, and none of them thought he could leave any time he wanted, so that should have provided him more cover.

Elena sounded like she’d just thought of finding the professor. They’d been waiting for the rest of Kol’s line to die and for that tattoo to be completed. Now, they were onto the next phase of their plan – finding the professor. Maybe that meant they hadn’t gotten around to talking to Damon yet. Maybe that’s what they’d do now. 

I left a message in the off chance one of them did take his phone and essentially said that Damon didn’t know where the professor was, so leave him alone. I could’ve called Caroline and asked her to go over there, but I didn’t want to pull her into another tug of war, and if I was being honest, I was a little concerned that when she found out what had happened, she’d side with the people she’d known her whole life too, and that wasn’t a relationship I wanted to test. The result wasn’t one I was sure I could handle right now. What I could handle was focusing on getting myself cleaned up and getting prepared for the busy night I had ahead.

Going into the bathroom, I flipped on the light and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Well, that wasn’t good. Didn’t come out of a fight looking like that unless I’d won a difficult battle. Dark circles under my eyes. Super pale, and not just from the curse. It was mostly from the blood loss if I had to guess. I’d leaked quite a bit of it down my neck and more out of my shoulder. It was yet another jacket that’d been ruined. Nice hole in the back now from where the bolt had gone through and cuts from the shards of glass that were either sticking out of it or had been there and shaken out when I moved. What a night.

Pulling out what was left of the bolt in my shoulder was the difficult part, but I think I was able to do it without getting any splinters stuck inside me along the way. The shower I took was actually a relief. It washed away most of the blood, and when I was done, I bandaged my neck and shoulder the best that I could. The hole at the back was a little tricky, but I got something resembling a dressing over it that would do for now. I checked my phone. Still no call from Damon. 

Unraveling a large wad of toilet paper, I stuffed it into the drain in the sink and turned on both the taps before leaving the room and going into my sister’s bedroom. My clothes were cut up and bloody. Did she have anything I’d wear? I found some jeans, a white tank top, and a zip up sweatshirt she wore during our training sessions. I think I was good on everything else, because I refused to wear her underwear or socks . . . hm. Those rainbow socks were kind of forgotten at the bottom of the drawer. I took them too before putting my boots on over them. Leaving her door to the bathroom open, I took my clothes and went into Jeremy’s room. Digging through his closet, I found the box of Alec’s things I’d been meaning to get for a while, put my clothes on top, and headed out the other door of Jeremy’s room to go downstairs. Now, where to start?

Going into the kitchen, I surveyed the work that’d already been done in there. Window above the sink and back door? Broken. Kitchen table? One of the legs was actually broken from when I'd landed on it. Opened drawers? Not broken. I pulled one out, dumped the contents on the ground, and then put it on the ground before stomping on it until it fell apart, then moved onto the others. I didn’t know how long it took me to get all of them, but I did. Then I was on to the cabinets. I kicked, pulled, and battered every single one of their doors until they’d all been detached and thrown into the middle of the floor. Next was the more fun task of smashing every glass, plate, or bowl that’d been on the shelves in each cupboard. 

Going to the refrigerator, I hesitated. I could do with something to help with the blood loss. Orange juice should work. Might just perk me up enough to make this go a little faster. While I drank from the carton, I started emptying the contents of the fridge onto the floor. There wasn’t much. Not much in the freezer either. Guess she and Jeremy almost always ate at the Grill or other people’s houses. I didn’t think either of them knew how to cook, so I guess that made sense. I was pretty much the same until Damon started teaching me how to cook.

I checked my phone again. Still nothing from him. Going to the counter, I picked up the ice cream carton that’d melted quite a bit by then and a meat tenderizer I’d found useful for tearing apart the cabinets. Throwing the carton at the white ceiling, I looked around to find a bit of clear wall, but there were cabinets almost everywhere. Didn’t mean there wasn’t some free wall to be found though near the back door, so I went to it, pounded enough holes into it with the tenderizer to make a nice big hole and then used my hands to start ripping the dry wall apart. I got the hole as high as I could and then moved on to the next patch. To get at that, I had to swipe all the jars off the counter because the wall was in the space between the upper cabinets and counter. 

I carried on with that in a fairly methodical fashion until I’d gotten to the window above the sink and needed a break. Leaning back against the counter, I drank some more orange juice and looked around at what else needed to be done. I was making good progress. I could probably move on to one of the hallways soon. Looking up, I couldn’t see Klaus in the other room, but I knew he was there in the dark, probably drinking and staring at his brother. 

If I was making too much noise, he hadn’t said anything, but I was glad he hadn’t, because I didn’t know what to say to him. I shared a big part of the blame for his brother being dead. It wasn’t so much that I’d gotten Kol involved. I firmly believed that he would’ve found out about the cure from Rebekah, and if she’d brought up why I might be a problem, he still would’ve gotten on the ‘Keep Silas Where He Is’ train. I just wouldn’t have had a chance to steer him in the right direction, because he would’ve done it all himself. Me being the one to tell him wasn’t the issue here.

The issue was that I’d daggered Kol, and yes, he’d been an immediate threat at the time, so in that moment, I’d been protecting everyone in the house, but then I had to immediately switch to protecting him from them and didn’t remove the dagger until way too late. I hadn’t gotten rid of the white oak stake, and I hadn’t been able to get him out a door, because I’d been holding back on my sister, cousin, and Bonnie. 

I could’ve used the vervain dart I had in my pocket on Elena. When I’d initially attacked her, it’d been so I could draw Jeremy away from Kol without the stake and clear a path for me to get to both Kol and the stake. I could’ve used the dart then instead of thinking I could get control of the situation and reason with her. I couldn’t have used the dart on her when she bit me though, because I’d had a stake I hadn’t wanted to use on her in one hand and a gun with wooden bullets in it in the other, but maybe I could’ve shot her in the head instead of blinding her. I also could’ve shot her in the head instead of her knee when Klaus threw me back into the house. Hell, I should’ve shot her when she’d pointed the crossbow at me. I’d just gone way too easy on her, on all of them. 

I wasn’t sure what that made me. Was it worse to be a fool or a hypocrite? It could be argued that I lectured her on not putting the world at risk over her selfish wants, then basically did the same thing, because I’d gone too easy on them, which also put the world at risk, but as much as I’d rather it be that I was a hypocrite, I didn’t think I was one in this instance. I mean, I had known that I was walking a fine line between going too far and not far enough, which had made it a more difficult challenge, and I knew that when dealing with supernatural beings, you don’t pull your punches in a fight, so I should’ve known there was really only one way it would go if I didn’t give it my all, but throughout the entire ordeal, there’d been a part of me that overestimated their good nature and really believed that they would stop trying to murder the guy on the floor if they just had time to think it over or if I’d said the right thing or simply because I was the one saying it, since I was supposed to be more on my way to becoming family now, or I’d thought I was. 

Yeah, I’d been a fool. Goddamn. I really needed to break something else. Might have to rethink my plan of action and move onto something that was a little less physically demanding than ripping out walls though. That could wait until tomorrow when I’d had rest. 

Pushing myself off the cabinets, I walked down the hall and started collecting paintings off the wall. I tossed them onto the floor near the bottom of the stairs. Mirrors and lamps made their way into the pile. Each and every crash was still as satisfying as the very first vase I’d smashed. I wasn’t being petty, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Klaus that I was. I was striking at the very core of my sister and Jeremy too, by ripping down the shrine they’d been living in since the death of their parents. With each broken item, they lost another thing that served as a memory of their life before their lives were turned upside down. 

They would never feel as bad as they should about what they’d done, and I couldn’t make them feel that, but what I could do was make them feel the loss of all they’d once held dear. The people who were important to me kept dropping like flies around here, but I wouldn’t respond by taking Jeremy and Elena’s friends from them, so taking this place apart piece by piece was the next best thing. I mean, the memories in this house were a big part of the reason Elena hadn’t taken her brother out of town any of the times I’d told her she should do it, so I knew that losing it would be painful for her. I suspected that Jeremy wouldn’t feel great about it either.

As I moved up the stairs and took framed pictures off the wall to start throwing them down onto the pile using my good arm, I reflected somewhat on how I’d staked Elena, and I didn’t particularly feel bad about it. I’d always said that no matter what my Mom did or what Damon did, I’d never kill them, and I suppose that must hold true for Elena too, because even with anger and dark magic guiding my hand, I’d missed her heart. I didn’t want anything to do with her anymore though. I just didn’t. 

Looking at the picture in my hands, my eyes narrowed when I saw my Dad standing there a little apart from the others, but mostly like a normal human being. “And you . . . talk about short sighted. What’d you buy her? A couple days over 6 months, and she still turned anyway. What a waste of a fucking life.“ 

I paused and took a seat on the step I was standing on. “If it was always your plan to die for one of us, then you trained me because you always intended for me to not only take care of myself, but to protect her too. Every fucking thing in my life always revolved around her, and look at you, here, playing happy families, and they still didn’t want anything to do with you. You look fucking ridiculous in that stupid Christmas sweater . . . and your condescending brother spoiled her. You all did. You and Mom getting her a fucking bike . . . I still don’t know how to ride one of those fucking things. In fact . . . “ 

Putting the picture down, I got up and stomped up the stairs, slogged my way through the wet floor in her room, found the tea cup set she’d put on display since our talk on the bridge when Alice saved her fucking life, picked it up, and took it to the top of the stairs before searching for the attic. I found the string for it hanging from the ceiling out in the hall and pulled the ladder down. Climbing it, I used my phone light to search for the elusive bike. Elena hadn’t said if her parents had kept it, but they didn’t have a garage, so if they did, then it was up here. 

I tossed a Christmas tree down the ladder, stomped on any ornaments I found, and kept looking until I’d found what I was seeking hidden away in the corner of the attic under a pile of boxes and a tarp. Fuck that bike. I grabbed it by the handlebars and tossed it down the ladder ahead of me before descending behind it. Kicking the tree down the stairs ahead of me, I kept the tea set in one hand, pulled the bike down with me using the other, and tossed it all on the pile before going back to the picture with my Dad to add, “And you can take your final request and shove it, Dad. I want nothing to do with her.” I threw the frame down on top of everything else in the pile, and the glass splintered. Second-guessing my decision, because I didn’t actually have any pictures of my Dad, I jogged down the stairs and bent down to pick the frame up, retched open the back, and took the photo out, so I could tear everyone but him out of it. 

I was aware that in this way, I was being hypocritical, because I fully intended to set this pile of Elena’s memories on fire before I left this house, and yet I was keeping a picture of him. I also had my car and the containers with my parents’ belongings, but the stuff in the containers was useful, and if I needed to even things out, then I’d be willing to set my car on fire too if it meant I could walk away from all of this with some kind of moral high ground. I’d take all my weapons out, and then just walk away from it all, leave the past in the past and move on from all of that, including the sister who was never more than an illusion. I had Alice’s car that I could fix up. That could be my new mode of transport. Flicking my eyes towards the door, I slumped a little. 

I did love my car though, in general, not just because of the memories associated with it. I didn’t want to kill it. Did I really need any moral high ground here? Technically, Elena through Jeremy was the one who mass murdered more vampires than I’d ever kill in a lifetime, some good, some bad, one of them I’d liked, and another one I’d cared quite a lot about. Nah, fuck it. I didn’t need the moral high ground. I was okay with being a hypocrite in this instance. Why should I lose anything else? 

I looked at the picture one last time. I could practically see Dad praising Jeremy for wiping out an entire line of vampires right before he would’ve turned around to kick me out of the house saying that he’d been right when he said I’d been a waste of time and to not come back until I was on the right side of this again. Shaking my head, I folded the picture to put it in my back pocket and turned to go back into the kitchen, so I could find some kind of an accelerant, but felt a bit of a wobble. Okay maybe it was more than a wobble. I felt a full on wave of wooziness crash over me. 

On second thought, why destroy the entire place in one night? There was always tomorrow. Maybe it was time to sit for a while. My new task could be keeping Klaus quiet company. I’d probably disturbed him enough for one night as it was. 

Going back over to the place where I’d waited for Alice, I used the wall to slide down to the ground and tried to ease the spinning of my head and the nausea that was building up in the bottom of my stomach. Yeah, I’d pushed myself way harder than I should have. Maybe I should lie down and use this sweatshirt to elevate my feet. I think that’s probably what Alec would’ve had me do.

Unzipping the sweatshirt, I slipped it off, and looked down at the bright red patch that was soaking through the tank top. The blood had seeped through the gauze, hadn’t it. I checked. Yep. “Shit.” Bet the back looked just as bad. The hole from the arrow had gotten pretty big after all the fighting, and pulling out the arrow had obviously made the bleeding worse, but I couldn’t just leave it in there when I didn’t actually know how long I was going to be here. I should probably add more gauze to both the front and back, but there’s no way I was getting up again until I’d had a good rest. The problem was that if I continued bleeding out, my good rest might become a death nap. If my ring still worked, then I should be fine since Elena’s the one who would have killed me, but did my ring still work? My curse had gotten a super charge tonight, so I didn’t want to test it just then.

Crawling it was. Turning over onto my hands and knees, I planned to slowly scurry my way over to the stairs when I heard a frustrated sigh come from the other room. “At a certain point, you’re going to have to stop.”

Stop? I didn’t want to sit and seriously contemplate everything that’d happened. How Alice was dead in a room just over there, and Kol was dead in a room behind me and thousands upon thousands of other vampires were dead, or how I had no idea what was happening with Damon, or how maybe with the rules Bonnie was playing by now, she didn’t need anything of the professor’s to track him, or how I’d utterly failed tonight, or how I was also grieving the loss of a sister, who had always been imaginary, and how I was probably dying because my real sister hadn’t held back on me the way I had on her, or how my parents would have still taken her side when all was said and done. Yeah, no, stopping – really stopping, the way he was suggesting – wasn’t an option. 

“I’m fine.”

“Let me see.”

My right side was fine, so he could see that. Diverting my path from the direction of the stairs, I swung by the entryway and heard him move from a spot along the wall that wasn’t too far from where I’d been sitting. When I did finally see him, the glass he was holding said that he was making good use of the alcohol supply I’d given him. There was a dangerous energy pulsating off of him even though he was doing his utmost to appear like he was put together, but overall, he mostly just looked wrecked. I gave him a faux-smile. “See. Fine.” 

Clearly, I hadn’t thought the plan for him to only be able to see my right side through, because he was still able to see my back from on high where he was standing, but as he tore his eyes away from it, he had the sense not to bring it up. Instead he went with, “Your pallor and your eyes say otherwise. Give me a proper look.” I slumped into something of a pout. “Now.”

Letting my eyes narrow, I blurted out, “No,” and proceeded to start crawling away from him. 

He changed tact. “Would you really leave me here to mourn alone?” 

Not if it’s not what he wanted. I paused to look back at him over my shoulder. “I’m just going upstairs.” 

Looking towards the staircase, he nodded before saying, “If by some miracle, you manage to make it up there, then you will not be coming back.”

“Watch me.” 

Turning away from him, I caught the start of what was sure to be an eye roll and carried on my way a couple of feet before he changed his strategy again. “I couldn’t help but overhear . . . Your belief in fairy tales extends to life beyond death, does it?” 

I paused. “It’s not a fairy tale.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

Getting me to stop by having an argument seemed to be a winner. Turning back to look at him, I finally took a seat and said, “Well, the only thing I’m not sure about is what happens to humans without magic being involved, so I really don’t know if my Dad could hear anything I just said, because he might be out of range, but wherever it is, I think even non-humans go there if they can find peace.“ Looking around at the empty space around us, I said, “Until then, vampires, witches, werewolves, whatever other monsters there are that have died . . . they get stuck on the Other Side. I think it’s like a holding cell of some kind, and since they have nothing better to do, they watch us all the time and complain about how we screw things up, but unless you’re Jeremy, you can’t see or hear them, and the only people over there who can talk to other dead people are witches for some reason. Esther did with Matt’s sister, who died as a vampire . . . Anna, also a vampire, used to listen in on living people’s conversations all the time, but she couldn’t find her Mom, another dead vampire, until Imelda got them together, and then they found peace. The day my Mom came back, she kept saying things that told me she’d been watching me since she died. Alec . . . Alec was definitely here tonight . . . It’s not a fairy tale. I’m sure they’re there.”

Inhaling deeply, Klaus forced himself not to look over his shoulder in the direction of his brother’s corpse, but there was enough of a head turn there for me to say, “Yeah, Kol’s probably here and bitching at one or both of us. I’d say he’s definitely on the ‘Bring Silas Back and Drop that Veil,” team now too, because it’s his best chance of returning.” 

He was too focused on not letting himself look around at the empty space or his brother’s body to say anything at first, but finally landing on something, Klaus tilted his head in my direction. “You should rest.”

“I’m fine.”

“So you keep saying, but I assume you’ve managed to catch a glimpse of yourself in one of the mirrors you’ve smashed if not the ones that must be upstairs, so you know that’s not true.” Seeing me take up more of an obstinate posture, he course corrected. “Unless your intention was to really give me more reasons to search for the cure and Silas if it means there’s a way to bring my brother back, then I’d say you’re not at your best right now.”

“Fuck.” 

“That’s what I thought.” Looking past me, at the pile I’d created, he added, “I assume you found a picture of your father. Can I see it?”

More manipulation, the only tactic he had at his disposal, to get me to come back. I could keep on going and reinforce his powerlessness in this situation even more, which would be kind of a shitty thing to do to someone who was grieving, or I could go back. A rest wouldn’t be too bad if he was willing to talk and keep me awake. Certainly sounded more appealing than crawling upstairs now that I’d drained every last drop of adrenaline I had. I needed time to replenish it if I wanted to get back to ripping this house apart. 

With a sigh, I said, “I don’t want your blood.”

“Well, then it’s a good thing I wasn’t offering you any . . . but since you brought it up, and strictly out of curiosity, why not?”

“Because I don’t deserve it. I failed you. I failed Kol. I failed Alice. I failed a whole host of vampires who never saw it coming. I’d say I failed the world, but I haven’t given up on that yet even if tonight was a massive set-back.”

“That’s a lot of responsibility for you to needlessly place on your shoulders.”

“Yeah, well, it is what it is, and it doesn’t matter, because I lost the battle, so I need to learn from my mistakes. The scars will be a good reminder of what those were.” 

“So, you can see them every time you look in the mirror and remember your failure.” I nodded, and he said, “I take it your father instilled that kind of thinking?” 

“I don’t know if it was ever explicitly stated.”

“But it was your take away from the lessons he gave?”

“I hated disappointing either of them when I was growing up.”

“Can I see him?” I got up to crawl back, reached into my back pocket when I got to the threshold and then sat again as I pushed the picture across the invisible barrier with my finger. I didn’t want his blood. Why he’d want to give it to me, I didn’t know, especially right now, but I suspected that’s what this was really all about. As long as I stayed on this side of the threshold, it should be fine. Crouching down, he picked up the photo, unfolded it, and then settled onto the floor as he examined it. “You don’t look like him.”

“Well, I was a doppelganger at one point, so I was never going to look like either of them, but of the two, I guess I take more after Mom in the looks department. Some of the more annoying parts of my personality, I get from him though. In fact, that’s the last thing the Pastor said to me. ‘Well, I can tell John raised you. He thought he was the smartest one in the room too, always took things right to the line of what was acceptable, but he had charm that still won a lot of people over. Your charm needs work, Miss Gilbert.”

Smirking to himself from behind the picture, Klaus asked, “And how did you respond if it’s the last thing he said to you?”

With a sigh, I answered, “I told him that some pretty sophisticated people thought I could be charming, so I must just be an acquired taste . . . and then I used a steak knife to nail his hand to the table and pushed Elena out the door.” Klaus’s expression darkened at the mention of Elena, and I added, “But my Dad wouldn’t have done that. It’s when he would’ve brought the charm.”

“I take it you did it to save her?”

“She was in transition . . . I also then went on to kill two men. I hit the first one in the head too hard and shot the second. He was near her, and that’s how she turned . . . I had to throw my jacket over her and get her to the barn, because she tasted his blood right there out in the open in the middle of the day.”

“I guess that answers the question of whether you’d ever kill a human.”

“I guess it does.”

Dropping his hand, he put the picture on the floor and passed it back to me before his eyes flitted to my shoulder. “And look at how that sacrifice you made has been repaid.”

Bowing my head, I nodded as I folded the picture again. I had told him that by not killing humans, I was still fighting for myself, so I could see why he’d think it was a sacrifice, because I suppose it had been. “I’m not sure she sees it as one. She tried to blame it on my curse, and another time she blamed me for her turning . . . I set her straight, but for her to say it, there has to be a part of her that thinks it, or at least did at the time. She was annoyed, because I said she was bullying Rebekah, and it wasn’t Rebekah’s fault that she chose to die and save Matt.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that also what killed you?”

I nodded again. “She forgot about me.” Looking at him, I added, “I know it was foolish to think that she would listen to me tonight. There are so many examples of her doing the opposite even when she was human . . . We don’t need to go over them so you can make me want to stay out of your way when you hunt her down after you get out of here.”

“Does that mean you will?”

Stay out of his way? “Honestly?” Bowing my head again, I shrugged. “With the way I’m feeling as of this moment . . . You’re the reason they’re rushing to the cure now, so you’re already at the forefront of their minds, and they can clearly handle themselves, so if you distract them enough to chase them off the prize, then sure. Why not?”

“And the idea of her? That’s simply faded away now, has it?”

“You’re being awfully nosy.”

“You didn’t exactly keep it to yourself.”

I suppose he along with everyone else in the house had heard what I’d said to her, and I guess he wanted to know if it’d been true when I said I wouldn't forgive her, or if he’d have to go through me to get to her. He wasn’t looking for flippant or glib. He wanted the truth, and I guess I owed him at least that much. With a sigh, I answered, “I don’t know. I wouldn’t say it faded away - more like it was guillotined - but I didn’t kill her when I could have, so if actions speak louder than words, I don’t know.” 

My head tilted to the side as I appraised him to see if he understood what I meant, and I think he might have, because his head dipped slightly as he looked down with a nod. I then added, “I suppose it’s hard to overcome a lifetime of being told ‘You’ll die in your sister’s place someday,’ but the idea of her was at least half the reason I was willing to take her place. I always saw myself as having been raised in the dark and her in the light, and I wanted to keep that darkness from her, because I could handle it, but I wanted better for her.” Exhaling a sad laugh as I bowed my head, I examined my cuticles and added, “Who knew that ‘Lose one, or lose both, and if both are lost, then the world is in peril,’ could be interpreted in so many different ways.”

Sounding genuinely intrigued, he asked, “That was the prophecy that your parents were told?”

“Part of it, and what they told me was probably only part of it too, but that’s the part I was always focused on the most, because I suppose, as a kid, an apocalypse, the scale of it, seemed large enough to offset not just a life that would be cut short but the desolate path that led to that happening, and that is the other half of the reason I was willing to take her place. I’ve since come to the realization that something on that grand of a scale isn’t what the world being in peril probably meant. Maybe Alice was right when she said I was born to right some kind of imbalance, which I do through hunting, so I’m not trying to find the next big thing to give my life some kind of meaning, but this certainly puts a new spin on the entire phrase.”

“You may have been raised in the dark, but you were not lost to it.” I gave him a dubious look, and he smirked. “I would know wouldn’t I?” My expression remained unchanged, and rolling his eyes, he added, “And I can assure you that there isn’t going to be an apocalypse, least of all one that’s started by your twin.”

Out of pure selfishness and fear driven stupidity? Anything from anyone was apparently possible. With a shrug I went back to focusing on my nails and said, “I know that Damon might be right. Maybe Silas won’t be all that bad on his own . . . He has a weakness, or he does as long as they don’t use it all on you, which means he can be killed . . . Of course he could Jedi mind trick his way into being emperor of the world if he wanted, but why would he want that? If he hasn’t just gone insane after thousands of years being alone with his thoughts, he isn’t gonna want to rule the world. He won’t know how to adjust . . . On top of the resentment he’ll feel for his imprisonment, he’s going to hate being around people . . . probably drive them to mass suicide with his mind control when they’ve annoyed him enough, and if my introduction into the world was anything to go by, that won’t take long, or he’ll simply do it to take his suffering out on the world, but he can be stopped . . . Whatever he’s planning, though, definitely involves dropping the veil. It’s in every text about him, and that is a bigger problem than him.”

“Then what if instead of working against one another, we work together.” I looked up at Klaus, and he said, “It seems to me that if Silas does exist, we simply give him all of the cure, and then kill him, so neither of us has to lose. The cure is gone, and your newest apocalypse doesn’t come to pass.”

“What if he turns you into one of his minions?”

Waving that off, he said, “Details we’ll sort out at a later time.”

“You still don’t think he’s real, do you?”

“No, but I don’t have to think he’s real if it gets me what I want - providing you don’t mind if I destroy the cure when we find it regardless of whether or not Silas is there.”

“Fair enough.”

“So, do we have a deal?” 

Looking around us, I asked, “What about Kol? You could bring him back if the veil is dropped.”

“Well, then I guess I’ll just have to find a far less devastating way to do that.”

“You don’t think dropping the veil is something that can be done anyway, do you?”

“From what I understand, my mother managed it for all of a day, so how long would it really last before some witch or coven decided to put it back up?” Holding out his hand, he offered, “Shall we shake on it,” and my eyes narrowed briefly, but before I could figure out what his angle was, the front door slammed open, and I looked over to see Elena standing there. Her eyes widened as they took in the sight of the pile meant to be a bonfire of her memories, but I was more concerned with what she was wearing. Who the hell gave her my clothes? Sure as hell wasn’t Damon, and I doubted it was Caroline. Bet it was Bonnie, which meant they’d gone into my room again. Should I be upset considering I was wearing her clothes? Well, I was anyway, because I felt like I was already the aggrieved party here.

I was struggling to get to my feet when her eyes landed on me, and she started heading in my direction. Before I’d even completely gotten upright, I took a step back to get into a wobbly defensive position, and an arm wrapped around my waist to pull me back into the living room behind me. She stopped abruptly at the threshold, and I didn’t have to see Klaus’s eyes to know they flashed yellow to accompany the deep growl that reverberated against my back. If it didn’t send a shiver down her spine, I’d be surprised. Certainly seemed like it might have from the look on her face, but she got the wrong end of his message, because all I got from it was that he was being protective. She on the other hand, rushed out, “Whatever problems you have are with me. Don’t – “

I cut her off with an angry, “Screw you, Elena. I – “ That’s when I found out what his angle had been. It was less about the deal and more about the handshake. Putting his hand under my chin, Klaus tipped the contents of the glass he’d been holding into my mouth, and clamped his hand down to keep me from spitting it out. It was faster than I could blink let alone move to stop him. Goddamnit! 

We were at an impasse. Me with his blood in my mouth, and him not letting me go, neither of us yielding. Ducking down to my ear, he quietly murmured, “You may forget from time to time, but the truth remains that you're only human, love, and I will not allow you to die out of sheer stubbornness.” I might be human, but there was nothing ‘only’ about me. I simply was human, and that was it. I tried to mumble that out, and his hold over my mouth tightened as he said, “A stubbornness that’s sure to grow with her being here again, and I can stand here like this all night. How long do you have before you collapse?” And then I’d just involuntarily drink it? Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. All of this was just yuck. “Or shall I cover your nose too, so we can speed – “ He cut himself off to chuckle at my gabled threats before saying, “I’ll take that as a no, so let’s be done with this . . . There’s already been too much death tonight. I will not add yours to the list.”

He had lost his brother. Was I making it harder on him? Not really. I think I was distracting him from it, but if I died, then I think he might feel more alone in that grief. I relaxed somewhat and felt him do the same before he added, “If drinking it is the harder thing to do, then doing so would only be seen as strength,” and that on top of garnering my sympathy for him seemed to do the trick. I gulped it down, and he let me go. 

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and from the doorway, Elena watched me, while asking Klaus, “What are you going to do to her now, turn her, because – “

She jumped back when he sped to within a couple of inches of her, but he stopped at the invisible barrier. “If I thought her life mattered to you in any meaningful way, I would consider that as an option. I don’t. You left her here to die, and in doing so have abdicated all responsibility for her, so just get what you came here to get or to survey the damage she’s already caused, because you’re certainly not here for her, and then go. She was right about your head start dwindling.”

Taking a step to the side, so I could see around him, my eyebrow arched, like how are you going to respond to that, and her shoulders slumped. Looking around at the remains of her house, she shook her head. “You really hate me this much? You’re the one who almost killed me, and now you’ve smashed up my home, and – “

“You didn’t answer his unspoken question. What are you doing here, Elena?”

“Oh, sure. When he asks a question without really asking it, you suddenly understand that’s what it means, but when I do it, I get you playing dumb.”

Turning away from her, I said, “Yeah, I’m not doing this. The faster you stop dodging and deflecting about why you’re here, the faster you can go, and I can get back to fucking up your shit. I’ll see you at the finish line, and then providing things go my way, I’ll never have to see you again.” 

“Come on, you don’t mean that.”

Lying down on the couch across from the one Kol was resting on, I put my feet on the arm to keep them elevated, since I still mostly felt like crap and said, “Wake me up when she’s gone.”

“Eve, where’s Shane, or - or the tombstone of Silas’s that he had? Jeremy doesn’t remember seeing it at the cabin.”

Laughing to himself, Klaus moved around the room to pick up a bottle, hesitated, and then picked up a second bottle before coming over to the couch where I was to offer me one. I took the whiskey and moved up the couch, so he could have the spot where my feet were. I rested my head against the other arm, and he took a seat, then held out his bottle in my direction, so I tapped mine against his in a cheers before attempting to get the cork out of it. At my struggle, he rolled his eyes, took the bottle back from me, removed the cork, and handed it back. I took a swig, washed my mouth out, then leaned over the arm of the couch to spit it out on the floor out of my line of sight, because that was a pretty disgusting thing to do, and I didn’t want to have to see it. 

Klaus exhaled another laugh, and I suppose watching me make a mess of her place might be entertaining, particularly if she was here to watch me do it, but we were sitting directly across from his brother. I was pretty sure he was playing some act to lull her into a false sense of security, because he certainly hadn’t commented on my destruction thus far. The second she crossed an inch over that threshold, he was gonna bite her, or that’s what I fully expected him to do, so I guess the question was, would I let him do that? I didn’t have a solid answer yet, especially if the only reason she was here was to find out where I’d stored Shane or that damn tombstone. “Eve, please. It’s important. If we knew where it was, we wouldn’t need to find Shane at all.”

Taking a large swig, I shook my head. “What tombstone?”

“You know exactly what tombstone. Bonnie said Shane had it in that presentation at the school.”

Did he? Maybe it was before I got there. It had taken me a little while to slip past all my teachers. “And she’s sure I was there for that part of his presentation?”

Elena hesitated before saying, “I don’t know, but I do know that you said you were there, and I know that it was the rock that Shane was showing us at the cabin.”

“Oh, was that a tombstone?”

“Yes! And I know you know it was. Maybe you smashed it into a million tiny pieces the way Stefan thinks you might have done, but I don’t think you did. You’re a collector of all things strange, so – “

“And how would you know that if you didn’t repeatedly go through my things?”

“Because you have entire storage containers filled with stuff that you won’t let anyone see, and I know it’s not just because they are full things that remind you of your parents. In fact, I’d be surprised if they remind you of either one of them. They’re simply full of information and weapons that you can use, which is why you disappear every so often when you need something from one of them and then forget all about them until you need something from them again.” 

“If you think I’m telling you where those containers are, think again, thief . . . but it’s not true that I never let anyone see what’s in them, because I let Damon take you to one of Mom’s once upon a time.” 

Her brow furrowed in confusion. “But that was . . . wait. He said . . . he said it belonged to a friend of his.“

Well, I still hadn’t admitted he was my friend at the time, but I suppose in the grand scheme of things, it wasn’t really a lie, and if that’s the kind of lie he came up with back then to help keep me a secret, maybe most of them weren’t so bad. “It shouldn’t have taken you this long to figure out that any time he said ‘friend’ he was talking about me, because how many of those do you actually think he’s had?” Klaus snorted, and I barely acknowledged him before saying, “Of course I moved everything out of where he took you a long time ago, but the fact remains, you did see one of those lock ups, and I took Alice to one not that long ago. Guess you shouldn’t have killed her, huh?”

“I didn’t know!” I took another drink in challenge, and her eyes darted from me to Klaus, like she was weighing up coming closer to talk me into seeing things her way versus him being there. She chose the smarter option of trying a different topic rather than crossing that threshold. “What about Shane? Where is he?”

“Who says he’s even alive?”

“You promised.”

“Oh, you mean in exchange for your promise to let me resolve this peacefully? Yeah, sure, I suppose I did, but you didn’t exactly follow through on that, so what makes you think I did? I’ve had plenty of time to call in someone to kill him.”

“You don’t know anyone.”

Turning his head in my direction, Klaus asked, “Is that why you asked me for any contacts I might have in Memphis, or was it Nashville? Atlanta? Perhaps it was Washington D.C.”

With a slight smirk, I responded, “Why yes it was, and it was Seattle.”

“Eve, that is ridiculous. You left my house that day and were home late with Alice’s new car, so I know he’s within a day’s drive of here, not Seattle.”

“How ironic. I believe she’s had Stefan spying on you.” 

As if what Klaus had said was something that couldn’t be denied, Elena carried on with, “And I know Alice’s car has West Virginia plates, so . . . “

“Well, then I guess you’d have a direction to look if he was still alive, but is he?”

Getting annoyed, Elena snapped, “You don’t kill people, so you can’t really expect me to believe – “

“Then why make me promise not to kill him?” My eyebrow quirked up as she slumped, mouth wide open, and I realized she hadn’t thought I would. She’d just used him as a bargaining chip to get me to promise to do something, so she could fake promise to do something and then go on her merry way to do whatever the hell she wanted anyway after having made me believe she wouldn’t. She wasn’t a trickster. She was just a liar. “Maybe I’ve seen how well getting other people to kill for you has worked out for you, so I thought I’d give it a try.”

Quickly shaking her head, she said, “No, you wouldn’t be hard on me all the time for not getting my hands dirty and then turn around and do the same thing, and you wouldn’t have killed him unless it was an accident. You couldn’t. I don’t believe you.”

“You did kill him once before didn’t you?” 

I nodded to answer Klaus’s question, and Elena quickly said, “Because you planned on bringing him back.”

My eyes narrowed, “Is it that you don’t believe me or that you don’t want to believe that your next best chance is asking Klaus for that sword? He might tell you where it is. I mean, he’s already lost too much to turn back now, so why not?”

For a few moments, Klaus’s façade fell as he regarded me. Yes, it was a test. The deal hadn’t been sealed with a handshake, the handshake he’d intended to use as a means of dragging me in here to force feed me his blood, so had the deal really ever been real? The First Battle of Mystic Falls had been lost, but we could win the next battle if we got out of here before they found out where the cure was. If we couldn’t get out of here before that happened, then the war could be won or lost at the end where the cure and Silas presumably were, and as long as the others didn’t find the professor or that tombstone, then I had two ways of getting us there faster than them. Would he use those aces up my sleeve? Would he not use them? Would he say something to make her think she was getting something she wanted, so she’d leave? Something like, “It’s in my car.” Why yes, yes he would. It so wasn’t in his car.

Elena quickly asked, “Where is your car? If you tell Bonnie - “

Looking over his shoulder, Klaus, cut her off. “You don’t think I’m that easy, do you? If you want it, you’ll have to find it yourself . . . Now, if you don’t mind, Eve was going to regale me with the riveting story surrounding a certain bicycle.”

“So, that’s it?”

Sitting up a little, I said, “What else do you want, Elena? We’re having a wake. You’re not invited. In fact, you being here right now is downright distasteful after what you did, so just go.”

“But this is my house.”

“And?”

“And . . . “ With a sigh, she finally said, “I can’t go . . . not until you do.” 

Interesting choice of words. Can’t, not won’t. Sitting up a little more, I watched her and a weight started to lift from my chest ever so slightly. Oh, how I loved that vampire of mine. “Didn’t happen to run into Damon did you?”

She shot me a look. “You obviously already know the answer to that.”

Klaus looked from me to her before saying, “And he already knew what happened here tonight?”

She begrudgingly admitted, “I’m sure he got an edited version, but yes, he did.”

Klaus turned back to me, and yeah I was pretty sure that this was going where he thought was. I gave him a slight nod, and he visibly relaxed before saying, “Well, I’ve been with you all night, so I know you haven’t been able to get him on the phone.” 

Biting my bottom lip to contain my smile, I look back at Elena when she said, “Just like she called one of your contacts, right?”

“Klaus is right. I haven’t been able to get in touch with Damon. I was sure it was because you were having Bonnie torture him, but – “

“I would never – “

“Oh, save your indignation for someone who believes you’re a saint. There are plenty of them around here. I’m just not one of them . . . If you called Stefan at any point after you left here to tell him what happened, then you can blame yourself for everything Damon knows, because he’s been trailing Stefan for days, so he probably heard your conversation and came to his own conclusions about it.” I watched her shrink somewhat and said, “I take it all of you went down to the basement to ask him where the Snake is, and he called you back when the others left so he could have a word with you alone. Is your excuse for being here that you wanted to try one more time with me, but now you can’t leave, and you won’t be able to tell them you can’t leave, just that you’ll catch up, or something along those lines?” 

Her eyes narrowed into a glare. “Why don’t you tell me since you already seem to know so much?”

I was pretty sure that the cavalry wasn’t coming for her. I’d say that based on the smirk on Klaus’s face as he took a large drink of what appeared to be vodka, he was certain of it too. She was gonna have to run like hell to get away from him when that barrier went down, but it served her right as far as I was concerned. “Based on my limited, but growing knowledge about magic, what I know is that with traditional magic, it's not possible to do a locator spell for a person without having something that belongs to the person or the blood of someone related to that person. I set the professor’s house and car on fire the day I took him, did the same to his office the next day, and he doesn’t have any living relatives as far as I could tell, so unless Bonnie comes up with a brand new spell using Expression, she’s going to waste time trying to find something she can use, because her only experience with magic is the traditional kind. Then she's going to waste more time going through her grandmother’s grimoires to find another spell, but there won't be one, and that is time that I don’t think you guys have if you're so desperate to just cut all that out and have me tell you where either he or the tombstone that could lead you directly to Silas is, so I think I was right about us getting out of here soon.” 

Elena didn’t need to know that the treasure trove of books and items that I’d taken out of his office before I set it alight were in my trunk. Sitting back against the arm rest, I added, “And I guess until we do it sounds like Damon’s gone with a variation of Plan L.”

“What is Plan L?”

“Well, why don’t you tell me everything he said, and I’ll let you know.”

“He thinks I left you here to die too, and he said he wanted me to save you no matter what you said, but then he doesn’t want me to stop you from doing whatever you want to the house, because if you only keep it to the house and not me after Alice died, then I’m getting off lucky, and he said it wouldn’t take you long to figure out he’d gone with Plan L, so when you did, he wanted me to tell you that he’s leaving his phone here and going with Plan Z now. The only way he’ll stop it is if he is sure you’ve been released and come find him in person.”

Plan Z, huh? Was it supposed to be an absolute last resort plan that Damon had conjured up in all the free time he’d had in his cell, or had he simply been messing with her? If he’d just been messing with her, why leave his phone behind and tell her to tell me that? Hm. Plan Z. I didn’t think that sounded like a very good plan. Maybe I could get Imelda to track him. I needed to call her about Alice anyway. “Plan L was for him to invoke the sire bond to keep you from going after the cure. He’s done that. He’s just put a poetic spin to it.”

“What’s Plan Z?”

Hell if I knew. Maybe Plan Z was his plan to get me out of here faster, but somehow I didn’t think that was entirely it. “Plan Z means you’ve pissed my boyfriend off, and you’re gonna want to let me out of here the way he wants. Until that happens, I think I'm done talking to you.”


	63. Plan Z

I felt a heavy blanket of danger pull me from my sleep. The atmosphere around me had drastically changed, and a moment later, I heard why. “Morning, Sunshine.” 

I was up off the couch and on the move by the time my eyelids started to flutter open. Taking whatever had been draped over me in the night and putting my arms awkwardly through the sleeves, I made my way around the back of the couch, and reached down to pat the shoulder of my very tense prison mate on my way by him. It was a simple gesture meant to convey, 'I’ll handle this.' My eyes were still only opened into tiny slits as I made it to the solid wall of muscle that was the other hybrid I knew standing in the entryway. Lifting my hands to push on Tyler’s chest, I got nowhere in trying to make him back up as he traded a couple of insults with Klaus around me, so I opted for wrapping my arms around him to try and put my shoulder into it, but mainly wound up walking in place on the hardwood floor. “Would you stop that? It’s annoying.”

“So are you. You’ve disrupted my slumber.”

“And your solution to that is to Reverse Moonwalk me to death.”

Closing my eyes, I tiredly murmured, “Running Man you into submission,” and heard him laugh. “You should go, so I can get back to sleep, or I’m going to tell on you to Caroline.”

“She knows where I am.” If I didn’t want her to be stuck in the middle, then it was probably a good thing she wasn’t here, but her lack of presence was a little worrying. I paused in my attempt to run him out of here, and he put his hands on my shoulders to push me back, so he could see my face. “And you look like crap.”

“Ever the charmer, I see . . . What time is it?” 

“I don’t know. 9 – 9:30?”

“In the morning?!” He laughed, and I quickly improved my posture, so I could shrug his hands off my shoulders and pointed to the door. “Out!”

“But – “

“Do you have any idea how late last night was?! Come back at a more reasonable time.” He started to turn away from me, and I continued pushing him towards the door adding, “And bring your brain with you when you do. Cheap shots might feel good in the moment, but 'you come at the king, you’d best not miss,' and this thing is far from over.”

Turning to look down at me, his finger was pointed up, like wait, he had a distinctly confused expression on his face as he said, “Is that from The Wire?”

“Yes, Omar says it, but it's also an updated version of something Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. Do you want me to start tutoring you the way I do, Matt, because I will if – “

Holding his hands up in surrender, he took a voluntary step back towards the door. “All right, all right. I’m going. I’ve heard how much of a tyrant you are. No need to – “

“Tyrant?!”

He chuckled, and said, “Caroline should be by later. I’ll stop by then. We’ll pick up some food on the way.”

I immediately lost my bluster. “Without poison in it?”

I mean, he clearly knew that I was locked up in this house too and presumably why. “Poison-free, I promise. I’m sorry about your friend.” 

My eyes darted to the room where Alice was before I could stop them. Out of everyone, Tyler would be on team ‘Feed the Cure to Klaus,’ as much as Elena was, but it was so he could get revenge for his Mom. It hadn’t been that long ago that Caroline had been worried that he’d do something stupid, and here he was first thing in the morning trying to rub Klaus’s predicament in his face. He should be upset that I was trying to stop them from getting the cure, but apparently, he didn’t hold what I did last night against me if it was because I was trying to protect Alice. I had been, but it hadn’t just been about her. Probably shouldn't say that just now. I nodded to acknowledge his condolences, and he left.

Turning, I ran my hand down my face and took in the damage I’d caused last night with a fresh set of eyes. Got quite a bit done, didn’t I? I watched my sister descend the stairs and was a little surprised that she didn’t have to tip toe around any vervain water from the tap in the bathroom sink. Nothing had seeped downstairs over night? I’d sort of been hoping to create a nice ice slide with it. I started heading for the stairs, because I needed to find a toothbrush and could check on the flooding situation while I was at it. “Where are you going?” 

Ignoring Elena, I continued on my way until she stepped in front of me. “You look awful. You really do need rest.” She’d heard that conversation with Tyler, had she? Why hadn’t she come down to shoo him away? I also wondered if there was something she was trying to hide, like the fact that she must’ve turned the water off. Stepping around her, I made my way upstairs, and yeah, the water was off when I walked into the bathroom. Searching through the cupboards and drawers until I found a fresh toothbrush, I was aware of her in the doorway, but ignored her while I brushed my teeth. When I was done, I plugged the drain again and left the taps on before going around her on my way back down the stairs.

Following me, she said, “I wasn’t sure if Jeremy or I forgot to turn them off with everything that happened.” I stopped on the bottom step, briefly closed my eyes and inhaled deeply to stay calm at what was a blatant lie she’d told herself as a loophole to what Damon had told her about letting me do whatever I wanted to her house, but now she knew it wasn't Jeremy or her who had stuffed toilet paper in the drain before accidentally leaving the taps running, so the taps would have to stay on this time. My eyes opened, and I carried on in my trek around the house without saying a word to her. When I got to the kitchen, I was quite pleased with what I found. I’d done a very good job in there. 

Going to the table that was still on its side, I started shoving it out of the kitchen, so I could put it in front of the doorway into the fancy living room near the bottom of the stairs. Certainly didn’t want the vervain-laced water to start seeping its way into the room where Klaus was when it did inevitably make its way down the stairs. When I went back to the kitchen, it was to grab the meat tenderizer off the counter and a few knives off the floor before going back out into the foyer. That floor needed to come up. Sitting by the door with my legs in a V-shape to make access to the floorboards easier, I used the mallet to hammer a knife between the floorboards and wiggled it around to separate the boards from one another. Crouching in front of me, Elena said, “So, you’re really just not going to talk to me?”

Looking over my shoulder at what was left of the front door after all the abuse it’d taken, I reached up for the handle, pulled the door open, and tried to stick my arm outside. It would appear I still wasn’t going anywhere, so I looked at Elena with an arched eyebrow. I didn’t believe my conditions had been met.

“Okay, I know what you said, but – “ Didn’t need to hear more than that. I got back to work on the floorboards, and she quickly tried, “Well, maybe if I knew what Plan Z was, I might be able to get Bonnie to change her mind.” Was her plan to get around Damon telling her not to stop me from destroying this house to verbally distract me? It'd be my own choice to stop in that instance. Tricky girl. 

And as far as her convincing Bonnie, she hadn’t called anyone while I was awake, and nobody had called her as far as I was aware, but I’d been out cold after I did manage to fall asleep, so maybe she’d called Bonnie then. I didn’t think she had though. I was pretty sure she was either stalling for the others, or Damon had limited her so much on what she could say to Bonnie or Stefan or anyone else outside this house, that she hadn’t been able to give a credible reason for Bonnie to let me go if she’d even talked to her, and if that was the case, then she was useless to me. There was a loud creak as one of the floorboards started to lift, and Elena said, “I know you’re mad at me, but I did what I had to do. Isn’t that what you’re always saying you do?”

At this point, I had to assume she was just trying to piss me off, so I’d stop ripping up this floorboard and argue with her. Maybe that's what I would have done before last night, but we were in the dawn of a new age. I hadn’t been bluffing when I said that if she had Jeremy kill Kol, I was never going to forgive her for it. Whatever relationship we’d forged had been broken, and no apologies were going to fix it. I didn’t want to know her. I didn’t want to be friends or sisters. I would never chase after her again or care about her approval on even the smallest of things, like a round off back handspring, let alone whether or not she thought something I'd done or would do was moral, and I sure as hell would never see her as the ‘good’ one again. At best, the damage done might be papered over, like some kind of crack in the wall, but that crack would always be there, or I was pretty sure that it would be. 

“And, I didn’t leave you here to die. As soon as I got a chance, I was going to call Caroline, and . . . “ Continuing to ignore her, I carried on with loosening the board in front of me. I’d never thought she’d left me here to die. I’d been perfectly fine with healing on my own with some good old fashioned rest and orange juice, and it’s not like I’d been completely cut off from the outside world. Sure, my phone had been in my car until Alice got it for me, but even if Alice hadn’t, I could’ve used the house phone to call Meredith if I really needed help. Well, I could have as long as she wasn’t working a shift at the hospital or in surgery. Of course all that was assuming I would have even called her, because I hadn’t thought to do it when I’d realized I was bleeding out. What’s more likely is that I would’ve continued trying to take care of it myself and staying out of Klaus’s room, so he couldn’t give me blood, and I guess if you knew me, the way Damon did, or were here to witness me in action, the way Klaus had been, it would’ve been apparent that in the head space I was in last night, I was not going to take care of my injuries the way I should have. 

I would’ve taken it right to the line on what I could survive. The only person who had been here was a mercurial Klaus, and why on earth would anyone have expected him, particularly when he was grieving and angry, to have done anything to help me, especially when I didn’t want the help and was being difficult? Damon certainly hadn’t thought he would, and I think even Klaus found the notion of it preposterous, but even supposing he would have always helped me, he wouldn’t have been able to get to me if I did something like collapse upstairs or even just stayed out of his room, which is what I’d intended to do. If Elena’s plan had been to call Caroline, she would’ve wanted to be doing it in the next half hour or so from when she got here, but something told me she wouldn’t have remembered to do it until this morning. 

Hm. Klaus and Damon might have a point. The supposedly evil guy’s in the group were the only two who had given enough of a damn to make sure I lived. Granted, I understood why she’d run out the door, and she had stopped to take me to the hospital before I staked her, but I could see their point. “Are you listening to anything I’m saying?” I shook my head with a shrug. “I said I really am sorry about Alice. If there was another way – “ 

Our eyes met, and she shut up. Getting my fingers under the floorboard, I kept my eyes on her as I pulled up on it to break it in half, and she backed away, because now I had a weapon in my left hand that I could use to stake her again, but instead of doing that, I threw it at her head. She ducked out of the way at vampire speed, but knowing she would, I’d already leaned back and brought my right foot up in time to connect with her face. Grabbing her nose, she let out a loud, “Ow!” and looked at me with wide eyes. “Would you stop – “ I faked like I was going to kick her again. When she attempted to block my leg, I sat up and punched her as hard as I could in the jaw. 

My left hand was definitely going to be swollen after that, but it was so worth it for all of about 3 seconds before she lunged at me. Not really sure what she’d had planned there, but before she could hit me, bite me, choke me, hold me down and lecture me, or really do more than try to tackle me onto my back, I wrapped my legs around her waist, flipped us, so I was on top, and then punched her again . . . and again, and again with my right hand until she brought her arms up to shield her head. That should just about do it. I got to my feet and backed away from her thinking that my message had been clear – I didn’t want any bullshit apologies from her about Alice. Apparently, that wasn’t her take away from it. 

When her arms dropped, she flashed her fangs and red eyes at me with a hiss and rushed at me in a blur of colors. Being pushed into a wall by Alice was one thing. She was or had been almost 1000 years old, and Elena had caught me off guard last night because I’d been focused on getting the stake from Jeremy, but there was no way in hell that I was going to let a baby vampire do that to me again. By the time she got to me, I’d already started falling backwards. Timing it to the millisecond, I grabbed her shirt with both fists to pull her down with me, and with her speed to keep our forward momentum going, kicked my feet up when my back touched the ground, so I could roll us head over heels, but this time when I landed in a seated position on top of her, I had the broken floorboard that I’d picked up along the way in my hand and staked her through the shoulder with it. 

She cried out in pain, but before she could pull it out, I again got to my feet, stepped over her head, and grabbed her by the hair, so I could start dragging her across the floor. There were lots of ‘Ah’s’ and ‘Stop it’s’ and one, ‘Eve, please,’ but I ignored all of it. Didn’t have far to go. Just through that door there. I shoved it open, dragged her next to the table, and then pulled her up to her knees, so she could see when I pulled the table cloth off of Alice. Shoving Elena’s head harshly as I let her hair go, I turned to walk away. Pretty fucking sure she hadn’t been in there yet, and she should pay her respects instead of hiding from what she’d done, like a coward. Wouldn’t matter if it was one of the thousands of others who were dead, but she’d at least marginally known Alice, so maybe that might make some kind of impact, although I doubted it. 

I heard her choke out a sob, and picking up the meat tenderizer, went back to my floorboards, 100% certain that Alice would not have wanted me to do what I’d just done, especially because of her. A few more sobs, and Elena was standing in the doorway. “I’m sorry, okay. I feel horrible . . . I know she was your friend – “ 

I lifted my finger, like wait, so she paused, but then I didn’t say anything. I’d just wanted her to stop. I prepared to start hammering away again at the next board and noticed ice had started forming on the meat tenderizer’s handle. It hadn’t done that last night. Of course, I’d mostly been in a state of shock, so maybe it had, and I just hadn’t noticed it, or maybe I’d used the sweatshirt sleeves to hold it and just didn’t remember doing it, because it’d been such a non-factor in my list of concerns. Seemed to have been using the sleeves of this jacket that way until now. 

Hm. Maybe my mind was still all over the place and nowhere at once, because where did I get this jacket? Was it Klaus’s? I liked it. Think I might keep it. _Wonder what’s in the pockets._ Elena wiped her face and babbled, “What – what does that mean? I don’t understand. Were you going to say something, or – “ I tried putting the tenderizer down to examine the right pocket, but it’d started freezing to my skin, so I wound up having to flick it off my hand, which I found extremely annoying, and that in turn made it stick more. When I was finally free of it, I dug the palms of my hands into my eyes and exhaled a harsh breath before taking a slower, calmer breath to try and reign in my emotions. Speeding back over to me, Elena crouched down and rushed out, “What is it? Is it the curse. Is it – “

“Well, I can see that true to form, Damon, thought this one through.” Thankful for the reprieve, I peeked around my hands in the direction of Klaus. Maybe I should go back over there. Elena was less likely to talk to me if I was. No. No, I wasn’t going to run from her.

“Nobody asked you.” Dropping my hands, I gave Elena a disapproving look. I had been fully prepared not to say another word to her until I got what I wanted, but having to sit through the torture of stupidity was almost a step too far. It was sheer idiocy that made her, or Tyler, or anyone think that they were safe simply because Klaus was locked in that room. He could kill her from where he was standing if he threw something at her right now. It was stupid to think he wouldn’t lash out if pushed, and frankly, she was being disrespectful, which is actually the thing that finally made me break. 

“You don’t have to like him, but treat him with respect.” 

Her widened doe eyes flew back to me. “Respect?! He killed Jenna and what about Tyler’s Mom? He tried to kill me!“

Which time? “Well, he must not have tried very hard, because you’re still sitting here, aren’t you?” Her mouth dropped open, and I added, “And since we’re bringing out our victim cards, I’ll just toss out there that despite him having also killed my mother, I say he does deserve respect. Besides, to not respect an enemy is to underestimate them, and the second you do that, you lose the battle. Take it from me. I would know.” 

I got up to get away from her, and she followed me saying, “Wait, are you talking about me? Eve, I’m not your enemy!”

Forget me not being able to read her very well. She apparently couldn’t read me at all, because she chose that second to tug on my arm to make me stop. Reflexively, I whipped around, broke her hold on my upper arm, and brought both hands up to shove her in the chest with just the right amount of force to make her back up a few steps. Instead of turning my back on her, I stayed facing her and took up a defensive position. Her lips thinned into a straight line as she gave me a look of frustration, and then she blurred forward to get behind me, presumably so she could put me in a reverse bear hug to keep me from fighting with her and force me to hear her out, but the second her arms circled around me, I grabbed onto them, leaned forward and used every ounce of weakened upper and lower body strength I had to flip her over my head and onto her back. 

She blinked up at me in surprise, and I pointed down at her in warning before turning to walk towards the kitchen again so I could find a tool that wasn’t metallic, but I also knew the second she got up again she wouldn’t heed the warning without a good reason. Kicking out to my right, I snapped the lower part of a spindle on the railing for the stairs, used my hand to wrench the now dangling spindle towards me, broke it off at the top, and casually rested my new baton against my shoulder before sauntering down the hall whistling the _Twisted Nerve_ song in Kill Bill. 

When I came back carrying a wooden rolling pin a minute later, she was kneeling in the spot where I’d left her. “You are crazy.”

Well, if I was, could she really blame me? Not even 17 hours ago, I was having nice enough banter with a guy who was now a burnt corpse in the room next to us. I’d had to fight off a witch practicing Expression, a supernatural hunter, and a vampire to try and keep him alive, but I hadn’t given it my all, because at least two of them were supposed to be family, and now look at him. On top of that, I’d been locked inside the house with his corpse and forced to wait for Alice to show up so I could tell her she was going to die and try to help her find peace. I’d had a whole 10 minutes to do it before she died in my arms. 

Now, I was imprisoned with her body too, and I couldn’t leave to get away from it. I couldn’t hunt. I’d taken precautions to prevent anyone from finding Silas before I was locked in this house, but those were little more than roadblocks to anyone really determined to find the cure, so while I was stuck in here, they were out there inching their way closer to the immortal witch. I had no idea what my impulsive boyfriend was doing. I was here, climbing the walls, trying to get through it as best I could, but I had Elena following me around everywhere I went, and despite me not wanting to have anything to do with her, she was still the only person who really just pushed every button I had, which meant she made me feel when all I wanted right now was to numbly work my way around this house like a one-woman demolition crew and come up with a plan. 

And if she meant in general? I mean, sure I had severe bouts of depression if that’s what you wanted to call my wallowing, but it never lasted for more than a few days, could be snapped out of easily enough, and was only ever after I did something really wrong, which is probably when I should feel bad, and why I simply called it wallowing. I also had anxiety around people, but that was getting better, and I suppose you could say that, in general, I had anxiety, because I was almost always wound up and on edge. It probably contributed to my being irritable so often and kept me from being able to sit still, and since I almost always had something to do, I didn’t sleep as much as I should, but my heart rate never really skyrocketed. In fact, it did the opposite when I was in a fight, and until last night and this morning, I never had difficulty concentrating, and really, wouldn’t feeling anxiety on some level be normal considering I was a human surrounded by powerful supernatural predators or practitioners of magic? 

Of course, I could also kill with the remorselessness and efficiency of a true psychopath, and there were probably some attachment issues thrown in there that I didn’t know much about because I wasn’t exactly an expert on any of this, but I think I’d worked some of those issues out in Hell, not that last night would have helped on that front, but with good reason, so yeah, overall, I think I’d turned out all right all things considered. Self-assessment complete, I passed by Elena and threw her a casual look that said, ‘Nope. Try again.’

Spinning on her knees to follow me with her eyes, she came back with, “People are always saying it, but I never thought – I mean, you’ve never – you’ve never hurt me before and between last night and today . . . Eve, I’m your sister.“ 

I made a show of pondering that as I turned to look back at her. “Actually, I don’t think you are.” Her shoulders dropped, and I said, “See, my sister, the imaginary one I had, the one I stayed to protect, the sister who made my life easier to live because I knew she was out there somewhere, the one I stayed in the dark to keep in the light . . . Well, she died the day I met you, and you have been living off any graciousness I may have shown her ever since, but that’s over now.”

“Graciousness?!”

“Let’s look at it shall we.” Using the spindle in my hand to help me illustrate my point, I pointed it to the left of an invisible line saying, “On this side, we have the first time we met . . . If you think that I’d let just anyone slap me in the face ever, but especially at my Dad’s funeral, and not hit that person back, think again. If you think I’d just let anyone get by with throwing a drink in my face ever, but especially at a birthday party I never wanted and where my adrenaline was running high because of the unwanted masses, think again. If you think I’d let just anyone break into my room to steal from me even once let alone repeatedly or shove me or punch me in the shoulder or grab me to drag me places, think again. If you think I’d let just anyone follow me around after a huge stressor, like playing in front of a group of people to help Caroline with her Dad, and hear insult after insult thrown in my direction without responding with more than words, well then, I guess you’re getting a good idea of how I would’ve responded to anyone else. If – “

“How am I insulting you? I’ve done nothing, but – “

“You’re insulting my intelligence and resolve. You aren’t respecting my space or boundaries. You are a fucking hell beast that is stinging me repeatedly for what feels like an eternity with every word you say, and you’re doing it, because you think that if you just keep trying, you’ll be able to wear me down, but you won’t, because this – “ I pointed my wand along an invisible line that more or less followed one of the floorboards and said, “This right here was my line, and last night you crossed it to this side just like I said you would.” I pointed it to the empty side that didn’t contain the list of things I hadn’t responded to since I’d met her. “And now, there is no going back. I mean, I haven’t killed you yet, so that probably says something, but I genuinely wonder how long that will hold.”

“Look, I’m sorry about Alice, but – “

Waving my baton, like a conductor, to cut her off, I said, “And that’s another thing. Stop insulting me by using Alice to explain my behavior away. I didn’t just do it for Alice. That’s not to say it wasn’t there - buried deep so as not to be a distraction – but it wasn’t foremost in my thoughts, and I’m not going to really delve into how I should’ve never thought that anyone would listen to Alec, because just like Alice, he died for you people without so much as a thanks or any real feelings of grief . . . I’m not going to get into all of that, because I wasn’t thinking about any of that last night.” 

“I simply wanted to protect the guy who was down and needed it. I mean, I am the one who put him down in the first place, so it’s not like I didn’t know he was dangerous, but it was my responsibility to keep him safe after that, and I didn’t want my last words to him to be a promise to remove the dagger I put in his heart once it was safe. I didn’t want him to be murdered in front of his brother. I wanted to prevent the annihilation of an entire line of vampires and to prevent the loss of lives there will be if Silas gets out, but I didn’t respect my enemy or see it for it what it was." 

"Instead, I held out hope that the supposedly good twin would do the right thing in the end, and the worst part is that you won’t even feel real remorse for any of it. You barely even looked at Alice before you came back out here crying about me being mean to you. And nobody around you is going to hold you responsible for any of it. The closest any of them will get to it is Damon. He’ll blame you for what he thinks you did to me, and maybe for what happened to Alice, because she was his friend in the making, but the rest of it? He doesn’t really care about any of that, and everyone else will let what you did slide, because they were either a part of it, or it’s just what they do.” Looking around at the house, I added, “But if I destroy this house, the place with all your precious childhood memories, at least you’ll feel bad about something.”

Turning away from her to go back to my hole in the floor, I added, “And I’m telling you right now, you’d better keep Jeremy away from me, because the next time I see him, I’m only going to be thinking tattoo, tattoo, tattoo and of all the lives that were needlessly thrown away to complete it. I mean how many would’ve really been required for it? 50? 100? Instead, tens of thousands were sacrificed for it, and I can’t in good conscience pretend that they all deserved it. Odds are that at least some didn’t, if not more than some, and that makes it more than unjust. It’s a goddamn atrocity is what it is, so while I’m always going to wonder, ‘Is this little sliver of the tattoo Alice or maybe that one,’ I’m also going to wonder that about the ones who didn’t deserve it too, and I find the idea of it so grotesque, that there is a very real possibility that I might flay that fucking tattoo right off of him regardless of what happens with the cure and Silas.” 

All right, so I might’ve meant what I’d said, but I’d also said it to provoke her into the response I got. My slow path of footsteps certainly indicated that I was waiting for something, so she should’ve known, but apparently not. “Don’t you even think about hurting, Jeremy!”

“Well, it’s clearly too late for that. Wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t been thinking about it.” That should just about do it. Twirling my baton around, I stuck the pointed end behind me, felt the jolt as she ran into it, and heard her gasp. Without looking back, I let the spindle go and left her standing there as I said, “And feel free to keep the shirt. It’s one I got for when I was pretending to be you anyway.” 

The thought made me stop, and I looked back at her over my shoulder. She was just pulling the spindle out of her and threw it to the side. She actually looked a lot like she was about to charge me again, but I still said, “That’s it . . . Why didn’t you – “

Nope. Not the time to be having revelations. She ran at me at a human pace this time to maybe try a different strategy, and I dodged, swung to hit her in the back of her ribs with the rolling pin, and kept on going. Hopping the table into the safe space on the other side of it, I turned to face her. She almost didn’t stop, but Klaus was standing right beside me, and her hair flew forward as she caught herself on the door frame. He could have grabbed onto it and pulled her in here. He didn’t. His arms stayed crossed over his chest in a pose that suggested that he was being entertained, and looking down at me over his shoulder with a smirk, he said, “I may have spoken too soon. Perhaps he did think it through.”

Maybe. Maybe not. Looking at Elena, I quickly said, “Why didn’t you get rid of Tyler earlier? You could have done it as easily as I did, and you clearly heard him.”

She didn’t answer. She was still too focused on killing me. “Right. Well, have you called Bonnie? Texted? What about Tyler and Caroline? Did you call them, or was it someone else? And last night . . . what was it you said after Klaus told you the sword was in his car? You didn’t say, ‘I’ll tell Bonnie.’ You said, ‘You can tell Bonnie,’ because his response was that he wasn’t that easy, right?” Again, she didn’t answer, but she could see that I thought I was onto something, and her posture relaxed some. That really told me all I needed to know. She hadn’t exactly told me what it was that Damon had said to her. She’d just told me to tell her what happened, since I seemed to know so much about it. My guess had been pretty close to what he’d told her, but not exact, and the difference between the two was actually pretty important. “He told you to come here without letting anyone else know where you were going and to not let anyone outside the house know you’re here, right?” 

Her answer was a hesitant nod. Hm. Not sure I’d really understood just how pissed off Damon really was with the rest of them until that moment. “What? What is it? What aren’t you saying?”

Yeah, right. Like I was going to say anything in front of Klaus. That’d go over well. That might even be the reason Damon ditched his phone, so that when I figured out what Plan Z was, Klaus and Elena couldn't try and use me to make Damon abort the mission, especially when there was nowhere in this house I could go to get away from at least one of them. Of course, I wasn't sure what Damon was doing for his part of Plan Z. Had he talked his way into getting the others to let him join them, or was he merely tailing them and would jump in to cause problems for them whenever he could along the way? He was doing one or the other. Of that I was pretty sure. “Nothing.” 

Her mouth dropped open before she quickly said, “It’s not nothing. What is it?”

I went to go back over to the couch, got all of a foot away, and then was picked up by the scruff of the jacket. Klaus turned me to face him, and I sighed, “You have seriously got to stop doing this to me.”

“You could get out of it any time you wanted, so let’s not pretend that you don’t also find it, at least in part, highly amusing yourself.” The corner of my mouth turned up into a slight smile, and his did the same before his eyes narrowed. “This Plan Z . . . I don’t think that you knew what that was until now, but whatever it is, I can assure you that no harm will come to you by my hand, so what is it?”

“I think he called it Plan Z because it is absolutely, positively the worst possible option, but I guess he could’ve just as easily called it Plan K.” 

His brow furrowed briefly before he quickly looked at Elena. “Or D for doppelganger?”

Her eyes widened, “Katherine?!”

“Uh . . . yeah.”

“It’ll never work. They’ll know she isn’t me.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Maybe long term, but for a few days? She’s a lot better at pretending to be you than I ever was, and she’s never as far away as you think. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she already knew about all of this. She was probably looking for a way to get to the finish line first, and Damon just handed that to her.”

“You think she already knew about the cure.” 

Turning my attention back to Klaus, I answered, “You haven’t exactly kept that you want it a secret, and she has spent 500 years learning everything there is to know about you to survive. Information is power, and she gets it. I mean, she knew I was in Savannah when I was there. She knew Elijah would be in Charleston. She’s the one who told Damon we were in Chicago. She has to have already known about the cure.”

Putting me down, he said, “She wants to use the cure on me herself.”

“No.” I shook my head. “There’s no way of knowing what will happen to your line if you’re cured. Personally, I think it’ll be like when you go walking around in other people’s bodies. Your line would be fine as long as you’re alive, but keeping you that way would be a lot harder. I don’t know how long werewolves live, but I suspect that if you kept out of trouble, it’d only be as long as a normal human’s life, so that’s all the longer your line would have, and if, like you said to Tyler, you getting the cure would mean your entire line is cured right alongside you, then again, everyone in your line would only have as long as a human would. She’d never chance either of those things happening to her. She loves being a vampire, and she never wants to die. She probably thinks, the way I do, that there isn’t very much of this cure out there and sees it as a bargaining chip. That’s all it is to her, but she will do anything to get it.”

He still seemed somewhat doubtful about it, but there was a part of him that knew I was right, because he knew how much of an opportunist she was. That knowledge was just warring with his paranoia right now; paranoia that he had every right to feel after what happened last night. “You told her that I wasn’t looking for her?”

“I told her that and that if you saw her you’d kill her, which isn’t a certainty. I’d say that’s what she wants.”

“If it means I’d have to put up with seeing her here all the time, then no.”

“Suit yourself, but that isn’t going to stop her from getting it if it means you might change your mind in the future.”

“Which is what Damon is counting on, because it means they won’t get it either, and that’s his revenge. For once his impulsiveness might actually be serving a useful purpose.”

“She’ll let the merry band of thieves she’s led deal with the dragon while she steals his treasure?”

He cracked a smile, a genuine one that I would think on anyone else would be an expression of affection, before he rolled his eyes and brushed it off with a touch of mockery. “A quest fit for a princess, don’t you think? Perhaps if I’d framed it as such from the start, we wouldn’t be where we are right now.” 

My eyes narrowed, but before I could snipe back, he exhaled a sincere laugh, and given everything he’d been through, how could I really deny him that? I bit back the more scathing things I might have said. “Yeah, well . . . this princess still would’ve thought it would be foolish to go in there and poke the dragon with a stick to get a treasure that is best left where it is.”

His humor was slowly replaced by the task at hand as he realized something. “But since there are already fools on their way to the lair, and you don’t know when we’re getting out of here, you’re already preparing for that mythical dragon to be released.”

Meaning that I’d already started thinking of whether or not I could use Katherine running around in Elena’s shoes to my advantage? That would be a ‘yes.’ I wanted to have faith that Damon would keep Katherine from unleashing Silas, because if he didn’t then he and I were going to have an immortal witch to hunt and kill before that witch could kill too many people and drop the veil, but something told me, Damon wouldn’t particularly mind that so much after all of this. Yeah. My faith that he’d do the right thing here was a little doubtful. “Well, I haven’t given up all hope of preventative measures, but it wouldn’t make me much of a hunter if I wasn’t.” 

It would require me getting my hands on that cure, which was more likely if I let Katherine do her thing, but I also wouldn’t need the cure if I just told them she was with them, because Silas wouldn’t be released, or would he? After last night, did I really believe that the others didn’t have what it took to get there without Katherine? I thought they probably could as long as they had Bonnie and Jeremy. I still needed more information on what was happening outside this house to make a decision on it, but in the meantime, why not cover more of my bases? “Not that you really believe in the dragon yourself.”

“Of course not.”

“Care to place a wager on that?”

He gave me a devilish grin in response. “What did you have in mind?”


	64. I'll Be Your Villain

Despite having worked out approximately what Damon had been thinking last night, I didn’t particularly feel any better about my situation. Under normal circumstances, I could handle being confined if I had enough things to keep me occupied, but there wasn’t much in this house that appealed to me, and these were not normal circumstances. There was impending doom on the horizon, and just about the only thing I had control over at the moment was whether or not I told the others that Katherine was in their midst, but the more I thought about it, the less certain I was that it would change the ultimate outcome. If my distress was showing, then it was nowhere near how strongly I felt it, because I think that for the most part, I was hiding it fairly well, but I really needed something to take my mind off my powerlessness until I found a way to make a comeback. 

For starters, that might require a change of thinking. Klaus might have been right. As long as something existed, it could be found, so even if I prevented them from raising Silas now, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t be found and released eventually, so would the best thing be to just make him cease to exist? Maybe. And how long were Klaus and I going to be here? I had to know that before I could really get started on my plans, and the only way to know was to ask an expert.

I’d gone upstairs to take another shower, so I could use the sound of water to hide my call to Imelda. It’d been pretty productive. She said that Bonnie had probably used a lunar spell to keep Klaus here, because tying the spell to an astral body, like the moon would make it sturdy enough to hold someone as powerful as him, but it would probably only last while the moon was on the ascendant. There was a full moon in three days. That should mark the end of it, and it’s probably what had been done to keep me here too.

It gave the others too much of a head start, but maybe I’d done enough to stall them for three days until I got out of here. Even if I hadn’t, then I might be able to catch up if they didn’t get too far. Imelda had also said that she’d track Damon for me, so I’d know where he was when I got out of here, and other than that, we talked a bit about Silas, who she also thought was probably more than a myth. She offered to come back and help if I wanted it, but I’d immediately told her that I didn’t want her to come back to Mystic Falls. 

She’d started getting a little pout-y, so I told her about Alice, because I’d wanted her to know why it wasn’t safe for her. She’d gone quiet after that. I suppose it’d be fair to say that a vampire dying had mattered to her, and I hoped she took note of that. She’d eventually said that Mystic Falls was a place that did seem to be particularly dangerous, which was deceptive considering how the town looked, but as long as I was here, then it wouldn’t keep her from finding a solution to my cure or coming back if I really needed her, but she’d keep it mind, and we left it at that.

After my call to her, I’d used my phone to try and track the others’ phones. They hadn’t left town yet, but I was sure they would as soon as they found the sword, and who knew how long that’d take with Katherine helping them, but at least they were still in town. With that done, all I had left was breaking things as far as tasks went, but after I’d gotten some more of the floor up near the front door, water had finally started trickling down the stairs from the bathroom sink. Now, I was on to my next task. 

Standing at the top of the stairs, I held what was left of a wooden chair from the kitchen in my hand. I’d torn the back and legs off, so now it was really just a seat. Crouching down, I stuck my hand in the water. Ice began to spread out from where my hand was, and Elena, never far from me despite everything that’d happened this morning, shook her head. “I really don’t think you should be doing that. You shouldn’t be using it at all.”

“I’m not consciously making that happen. It just happens whenever I touch water.”

“And I don’t think you should be doing this either.”

“You say that now, but wait until you have a go.”

“It’s stupid.”

I muttered, “You’re stupid,” and waited for the layer of ice to make it to where I wanted it before lifting my hand half a minute later. It went all the way down the stairs and almost to the front door, but I’d left what should be enough room to keep from crashing into it too hard. I’d shoved the pile of ruined memories away from the bottom of the stair case too, so my path was clear. It should be fine. Putting the chair seat upside down, so the flat part was on the surface, I took a seat. 

“You’re going to break your neck, and then you’ll be a vampire.”

“No, I won’t. I know how to take a fall.” 

I threw her an annoyed look, gripped the top step, and then pulled myself forward. It was super-fast, but also super-bumpy, not quite as fun as I’d been expecting because of that, and it was also impossible for me to stop before I hit the end of the ice unless I fell off, which is exactly what happened when Caroline opened the front door just as I got to the bottom step, because I tried to turn. The chair seat went shooting out from under me, and Caroline hopped that, but I came next. I completely side swiped her as I rolled into her legs, and she came tumbling down as I came to a stop a few inches from the invisible barrier with a laugh. Getting to her hands and knees, she threw me a cross look, “Eve, seriously?!”

I exhaled another laugh before moving to get up myself. “Think I should maybe try a bigger sled, one that’s big enough to go from one step to the next without bouncing in between, and then I’ll really be flying.”

“You want some help with that?” I looked up and saw Tyler at the door. Whatever look Caroline gave him from behind me made him shrug. “What? It might be fun.”

My eyebrows arched as I turned back to her. “You want him to have fun, don’t you?” 

My underlying meaning was clear. If he was busy with this, then he might stop poking the caged wolf in the other room. With a sigh, she briefly looked up the stairs and said, “Fine. Have you eaten anything yet?” Finally, seeing what I’d done to the house, she murmured, “Oh my god, Eve. What have you done?”

“Oh, I’m not done yet.” Looking around, like I was completely oblivious to why she’d be horrified, I continued, “I’ve got a long way to go still, but I think I’m getting there.”

Stepping forward, she put her hands on my shoulders to make me look her in the eyes as she said, “Eve, you have to stop. This isn’t healthy.”

“You know what isn’t healthy? Being locked in a house with the corpses of two people I used to quite like.”

Her brow furrowed in concern. “I’m sure it can’t be easy to be here with two dead people period, but - “

“Actually, the who does matter. You don’t seriously think that I haven’t had to chill with this dead body or that dead body throughout the course of my career, do you? There’s a pretty distinct difference.”

With a sigh that said I was starting to frustrate her, she asked, “Well, why did you have Alice come here if you knew - “

My response was a little snappish as I cut her off. “Because to not do so was unthinkable to me.” My eyes narrowed somewhat. She’d liked Alice. They’d shopped together multiple times, but she didn’t seem upset that Alice was dead or angry with the people who had killed Alice, and it’s because when it came down to it, if it was her friends versus an outsider or even tens of thousands of faceless outsiders, she’d choose her lifelong friends every single time, wasn’t it? Maybe that was normal, but alarm bell after alarm bell was going off in the back of my mind. Going back to a more care free expression and lighter tone, I added, “I didn’t want her to die alone, and I really wanted her to find peace, but I don’t know if it worked. I’m not very good at saying the right thing, you know?” 

I was watching her closely, but all I saw from her in that moment was absolute sympathy. “You know what to say when it’s important.”

“I actually don’t when it’s important.” I’d remind her that I informed her Mother that her daughter was going to die by calling her and asking her to tell Tyler’s Mom that he was going to die, but he was standing right behind me, and I didn’t want to remind him about his Mom in front of Klaus. So far, they’d both successfully ignored him.

“I’m sure you did fine.” With a sigh, she asked, “Where is she?” 

I tilted my head in the direction of the fancy dining room, and her shoulders dropped before she shared a look with Tyler over my head. I think his job now was to distract me while she went to say her goodbyes. At least she wanted to pay her respects . . . and just like I suspected, Tyler’s arm went to my shoulder as he steered me in another direction saying something about maybe being able to use the table, but I paused to look back at Caroline and asked, “How did you know what happened?” 

Tyler dropped his arm, and looking a little more stressed than I’d like about how she was going to answer that, Caroline turned back, answering, “Um, Elena called. She wanted me to check in on you.”

Well, if Tyler had been with Caroline when she got the call, made a beeline here immediately after it ended, the way I suspected he had, and all that happened this morning, then I was pretty sure that hadn’t been Elena, and where had Caroline been all this time? “On her phone?”

“No, she left it here by accident, so she was borrowing Bonnie’s.”

“And what else did she say?” 

Caroline shared another look with Tyler, and answered, “Not much . . . Just an overview, really. They’re getting the cure, and you and Klaus are here. ”

So it was an overview that didn’t say much, but that was also detailed enough to include that Alice was here? Something felt off about that, and seriously, what the hell had Caroline been doing if she’d known since this morning that Alice was here? How would she do on a question I already had the answer to thanks to Imelda? “Right . . . Any idea on when I’m gonna be getting out of here?” 

“It’s just a precaution, Eve, because of what happened with your curse. I heard it was bad.”

Did she not know the answer, or did she not want to say it, and I didn’t like that word ‘precaution.’ “From Elena?” 

“I heard Bonnie and Stefan talking about it in the background.”

“And they said it was just a precaution?”

“Well, I mean Elena was worried about when you were going to get out, and Bonnie assured her that you would be here until the full moon, but as soon as they’re back, I’m sure the plan will be helping you get rid of that curse. They just don’t want you hurting yourself or others, and if you’re here in a controlled environment, you won’t.”

Not sure why it felt like pulling teeth to get ‘the full moon’ out of her, but at least she’d said it even if I wasn’t sure she’d meant to say it. There was something else about what she’d said that though made me feel a strong pang in my chest for some reason. It was achy and icy and really quite unpleasant. “According to Stefan, right?”

She was hesitant with her nod and then quickly rushed out, “I’m sure they didn’t know about Alice being here though.”

And them knowing that would have changed things how? Were they suddenly going to come back and let me out or take Alice away to make me being here easier on me? And how had she known that Alice was the second corpse I was talking about straight away? How had Tyler known about Alice this morning? The others had to know from the real Elena that Alice was here, because she’d gotten me when she tried to call Alice’s phone last night, and they’d obviously told Caroline, who either told Tyler, or Tyler had simply overheard them telling her.

“Mm.” _Don’t panic. Everything is going to be just fine. It’s Caroline. Yes, she’s lying to you, but give her another chance to come clean._ “Yeah . . . Why does it sound like there are discussions being had about putting me in some kind of magical psychiatric institution when they come back?” 

She was a little lost for words, but I knew the answer by the look on her face in the split second after I’d asked. It felt like that’s what they were discussing, because that is what they were discussing. So was the plan after they’d cured Klaus to just to lock me up like this all the time until Imelda figured something out? How were they planning on getting me into the magical prison? And where would this magical prison be, because something told me it wouldn’t be Elena’s house. Maybe the cell in the basement at the boarding house, but what about Damon? Stefan had to know he wouldn’t allow that, so were they just going to hide me away from him? What if the plan was to rip what was left of the curse out if Imelda took much longer? Because what was there now was a whole lot more attached to me than what had been torn out the last time, and that had almost killed me. 

Seeing that I was coming to just about every negative conclusion I could, Caroline quickly tried to fix it. “No – nobody said anything like that. Why would you think – “

“Because everyone thinks I’m crazy, don’t they?” It’s what Elena had said this morning, wasn’t it? “And the terms ‘danger to yourself and others’ and ‘being in a controlled environment’ are typically associated with a psychiatric institution.”

With a sigh, her shoulders fell, and she shared a look with Tyler before finally saying, “Look, I’m sure it’s nothing. People’s emotions are just running high. That’s all.” 

Except it wasn’t a million miles away from what Stefan and Elena wanted to do right after I came back from being dead, because they thought me and my curse somehow blew up the Pastor’s farmhouse, and if anyone had been calling me crazy lately, it was Bonnie. Maybe this is why Damon was even more pissed off than I would’ve thought. Maybe he’d heard them talking about it when they were going down the stairs to the cellar or just in the living room when they thought he was down there or something? Is this why his number one priority had seemed to be getting me out of here? It must be. He’d said that the only way he’d stop Plan Z was if I got out and found him, and this was why, wasn’t it? “So, I take it ‘Elena’ put on a good show of sounding afraid when she wanted to know when I was getting out?”

“I wouldn’t say it was an act, and can you really blame her? You almost staked her in the heart and nearly froze her to death.” 

And that’s why I wouldn’t be leaving this house even on the full moon. Caroline and Tyler were part of the plan to keep me imprisoned until the others got back, weren’t they? I had to put everything I had into keeping a calm demeanor. Focus, focus, focus. Katherine didn’t know everything yet, but she already had a lot more information than I would’ve thought given that she must’ve called Caroline early this morning . . . unless that phone call wasn’t the only communication Caroline had with them today. Had Bonnie and Stefan really said everything they were thinking in the background of a single phone call Caroline had thought she was having with Elena? Something told me that was probably a no, and I still didn’t have an answer to why it’d taken her this long to get here if the first and supposedly only call she’d gotten was this morning.

What was her task supposed to have been today other than babysitting me? Helping them find the sword maybe, and now she was here to find out where Klaus put it so she could help them from here with it, wasn’t she? Were the rest of them even still in town, because she didn’t seem to know that Damon wasn’t in his cell, and they would’ve said something to her if they’d noticed he wasn’t. Had they just given him enough blood to last him a few days, left their phones here, and bought burner phones to keep in touch with Caroline, because they knew I could track their phones? Bet they did, especially if Katherine suggested it. That is something she would think to do considering she’d spent the last 500 years on the run. Were they on their way to Whitmore, the lake house, or Cincinnati right now? “An overview of what happened, huh?”

“For the most part, yes . . . And you’re acting strange. What’s wrong?” My eyebrows arched, and she rolled her eyes. “Besides the obvious.”

“You seriously didn’t think that Elena was acting strange?”

“I told you she wouldn’t really believe that you wouldn’t give into her on this, but I guess I should have said she wouldn’t either, and I’m sorry if you were hurt by that, but what you did . . . that wasn’t like you. As infuriating as I find it sometimes, you always put her first, and she’s come to expect that, so considering everything she’s been through, I’d say she’s holding up pretty well. She wanted me to tell you that she knows how you feel about it, but she’s been thinking about this cure for a while now, and she saw an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. She said she knows you’re angry about what happened, but she’s going to make it all up to you. I’m sure she’ll come around after she’s had some time to think. They all will.”

“Uh huh . . . “ Well, that changed things. Or did it? To tell her about Katherine, or not tell her about Katherine? That was the question. I glanced in Klaus’s direction and got a very subtle, but clear shake of his head. Wouldn’t have expected anything different out of him. My eyes flicked to the stairs, and I was inclined to agree with him. Plans had already been in the works on what to do about me when Elena came back last night, and yet I hadn’t been given a heads up about it, which really just proved that all her apologies were fake. 

Katherine didn’t care that I didn’t want her getting the cure. She’d get it regardless, and she knew I’d know that and why. When she said she was going to make it all up to me, she wasn’t talking about that. She was talking about what they’d done last night and what they were planning to do to me when they came back. _‘I have my rules. You have yours. We may bend them from time to time, but we have them for a reason. Self-preservation above all else . . . You leave that with me.’_ Those were the last words she said to me in person, and I think her heart was in the same place when she said that to Caroline. 

I’d never understood our relationship, and I didn’t trust her, but if I compared it to the relationship I had with Klaus, another relationship I didn’t particularly understand, then there were similarities there. It’s just that I’d known her for years. She was my first addition to the Lonely Club, and she was actually there as a witness for part of my life that I could only talk about to people now. She almost always only ever looked out for herself, but she had taught me that trick I used when I was bitten by a vampire, and she did tell Klaus I was out of town during the Sun and Moon ritual and hadn’t told him I was Elena’s twin. She’d also given me the motivation to keep going when I was dying outside the boarding house, and more than all of that - I didn’t want to admit it, because if I did, I’d never be able to repay her, and it’s probably why I was obsessed with not owing her any more on top of it, but I couldn’t help but think that she’d pushed Damon and I together. 

I think that’s why she staked me. It’d certainly gotten his attention. He’d had me move in with him that night. It’d taken him from being equal parts intrigued and wary of me to seeing me as a person and wanting to kill whoever had hurt me. She knew him well enough to know that’s what would happen. 

She might have done it to keep he and I both out of her way and to use whatever he felt for me to her advantage, the way she had at the masquerade ball, but the end result was that she was the instigator for our relationship, and I almost think that maybe deep down in a place she rarely accessed, she wanted that for me. It has to be what she was talking about when she said I had more than she’d ever been able to have before I even knew that he and I were a thing, and there hadn’t been a hint of bitterness to it when she said it. I think it’s also why she said she’d clear the room so I could have him to myself when Elena was in there with him when he was dying of the wolf bite. 

All that to basically say, there was more there to our relationship than I wanted to admit, because the second I did, it would absolutely bite me in the ass, but would it really be worse than what anyone else around here had done? I didn’t know anymore. I could also see her using getting retribution on my behalf to say I owed her one when Klaus inevitably rejected her offer of the cure for her absolute freedom, so I’d have to talk to him about it, but deep down, maybe there was a part of her that was thinking about the girl she’d met, who used to have such cynical views on caring about people or being cared about by people. That girl had been making such progress, but she’d just been proven right in a pretty harsh way on all the things she used to say, so maybe that part of Katherine, however buried it was, the one who related to how that felt in some way, genuinely wanted to make them pay for that, and it helped that she already hated most of them. So what did I do about that? 

I needed some to think about it, because at this point, I was sort drawing a blank on what I should do. I knew what the right thing to do was, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, because there was a part of me that wanted her to punish them, and was doing them a favor by ratting her out to Caroline the right thing if it meant they were still just going to lock me up and keep me from being able to hunt? How many lives would be lost? How would I stop Silas when he was inevitably let out if I was imprisoned ‘for my own good?’ Or was that just me being selfish about my own well-being? I didn’t know. I needed time to think.

Turning to Caroline, I asked, “Have they found the sword yet?”

“I don’t know.”

“The professor?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Right.“ I didn’t believe for a second that she didn’t have a definitive answer on either of those questions. Looking to the side in a bit of a daze, I finally said, “Actually, can you guys come back later?”

“What? No. We’re not leaving you here alone.“

Yeah, well, that really just made me feel like they were my prison guards at this point. All trust, every bit of it that I’d had with anyone here had been absolutely shattered. It’d started last night, and I’d just gotten all the confirmation I needed to know that my relationship with Caroline hadn’t passed the test I hadn’t wanted it to take, because maybe she was right, and everything would be okay, and maybe she really didn’t know what the others were doing, but I didn’t believe her about any of it, and if I didn’t believe her and seriously felt like she was a prison guard or enemy sent here to keep me nice and docile until they got back rather than a best friend, then my trust in even her had been severely shaken. Damon, Klaus, Katherine, and Imelda. They were, ironically, the only ones I could rely on right now. “I was thinking you could maybe get something for Alice to wear? You know what she would’ve liked.”

She shared another look with Tyler, and finally gave me a reluctant nod. “Sure. We can do that and come back in say an hour?”

I barely registered them leaving, and the second they were gone, I started looking around to find things I could use to barricade that door. Yeah, between the windows and smashed doors, there was no way to keep them out if they were determined to get in here. I felt Elena come down the stairs behind me, and the first thing she said was, “What are you doing?” I didn’t answer. “Why didn’t you tell them I was here?” 

Because I needed time to think. I’d already been toying with the notion of letting Katherine continue on with what she was doing if the others were going to get to Silas anyway, because it meant I could get the cure from her to end Silas before he became too much of a problem, but there were three layers to this debate going on inside my head right now. What was right or wrong? What was the best thing to do strategically? What did I want to do?

Before I moved Mystic Falls, I never would’ve considered what was right or wrong before I did something wrong. I’d just do it and deal with the soul crushing consequences after I’d done it. I think I needed to remove it from the equation again. My opponents hadn’t limited themselves by moral principles, so why should I? That really left what was the best thing to do strategically and what did I want to do as my main considerations.

I had to address what I wanted to do first. Ignoring it would allow those quiet whispers in the back of my mind to secretly interfere with me finding the best strategy, and identifying the best strategy was the one thing I had to get right. Thus far, I’d mostly been outraged on behalf of others. I hadn’t allowed myself to acknowledge the betrayals that had been done to me personally yet, just like I hadn’t let myself feel the loss of Alice, which meant that I was treating the betrayals against me the way I did the loss of someone I cared about by distancing myself from it. It went all the way from Elena right down to Matt. 

Going through my belongings. Attempting to steal from me again. Lies. Manipulation. Disregarding my attempts at peace. Biting me. Murdering Kol, someone they knew I liked, and not caring because they thought he wasn’t someone I should like. More lies on why it had to be done. Killing Alice - I didn’t give a shit if it was an accident any more than I’d cared that Jules accidentally bit Rose, because she knew what she was doing when she left herself unchained, just like they knew what they were doing by killing Kol, but what actually made it worse was that Jules was a stranger and hadn’t had me there telling her not to do it. Not listening to me about Silas. Wanting to stuff me away in some padded room and twisting it to make it sound like it’s what was best for me, which I would think might be karma for the professor if he didn’t actually need therapy, but he did, and I didn’t. Across the board, I’d been personally betrayed over and over, and aside from wanting them to be punished for the wrong they’d done in general, I wanted them punished for that too. 

That’s where Katherine came into it. I sort of didn’t mind the idea of her taking it out of my hands if I was being honest with myself, but her message letting me know that she was going to do something to the others on my behalf would still make me culpable for anything she did even if I didn’t do it myself, so was that really any better? Even if I took morality out of the equation, I still had to consider it in terms of what was best for me, and would allowing my ‘evil’ queen to do her worst be what was best for me? Probably not, but there was no denying that I wanted them to suffer. That might change by tomorrow or the next day though. The best option for my own well-being would probably just be leaving with Damon once everything with Silas had been dealt with in a satisfactory way, but it was really hard not to think of that as running, and I didn’t run from challenges. 

On the other hand, if doing the thing that is harder was strength, then maybe not seeking retribution and cutting my losses here would be the ultimate display of it. I wasn’t sure. I’d have more time to think about all of that after I determined the best strategy going forward. 

So, what should my strategy be? I still didn’t have the information I needed to make that determination, but Katherine was definitely a part of it now. I was about 50/50 on what to do about her from a strategic standpoint. It really all depended on how far they were in their search for the sword or the professor. If I knew that, then it might make all the difference. If they had found the professor, I’d leave Katherine with them. Since he’d been to wherever Silas was, he could take them straight there, and I couldn’t do anything to stop them if I was stuck here until the full moon. Katherine could get the cure, and since Klaus said I could have it if I won our bet on whether Silas was real, there’d be no hard feelings from him if I got it from her. I’d just take it from her first and then tell her that in exchange for it, I’d have a word with Klaus on her behalf. I’d have to do it that way, because she wouldn’t hand it over without those assurances from him first, but as long as I gave her my word that I would do what I could with him, she’d get over it fast enough, and ultimately, she’d understand the same way I did whenever she did something that would piss most people off. That was probably the best scenario I could hope for if they were on their way to the professor right now.

If they were still looking for ways to find the professor or had the sword and were struggling to read the map on Jeremy with it, then I could throw Katherine under the bus if it meant slowing them down, but would it really do that? Not for longer than it’d take for Bonnie and Stefan to trap her and lock her up the way Klaus and I were, and that’s if they didn’t just kill her. I wasn’t willing to chance them doing that to her after everything else that’d happened, and even if she was out of the equation, they’d continue on with their attempts to find the cure without her. Probably best to leave her where she was if that was the case, because again, I could swoop in at the last second and either stop her from freeing Silas or steal the cure from her, whichever one was more practical at the time. 

Now, how to get out of here? I had to save myself from more imprisonment, or it wouldn’t matter what my other plans were, but I should probably also plan for what to do when I did get out of here so I could be where I needed to be at the right time to have the greatest impact on what was happening at the time. I was distracted from my train of thought as someone snapped their fingers in front of my face. “Hello?! Are you listening to me?” I realized that I’d been pacing and stopped to look over my shoulder at the interloper on my thoughts. “Well?” I had no idea what the fuck Elena was on about. “Is it because of that bet you made? You want to keep me here as collateral of some kind, don’t you? I still can’t believe . . . “ 

Huffing out a sigh, I threw my eyes to the ceiling and tuned her out. If Silas was real, I got the cure to use on Silas, and Klaus couldn’t kill Elena. If Silas wasn’t real, Klaus got to kill her and to destroy the cure. My suggestion, actually. That’s how sure I was that I was right for starters, and it also just so happened to be the only way I could think of to keep him from killing her the second he was able to leave that room. I mean, he could tell me right now that he wouldn’t – give me his word on it and everything, not that I’d ever ask him for it under the circumstances - and there’s still no way I’d believe him, but if it was part of a bet, then it meant leaving whether he killed her up to chance, so if he didn’t avenge his brother for whatever reason, then he couldn’t be blamed for it by anyone, and if he won and was able to kill her to avenge his brother, I couldn’t really blame him. It took the responsibility for it out of his hands, and I think, whether he wanted to admit it or not, he appreciated that, which I think might be why I did it rather than for her . . . or I had done it for her too, and I just wasn’t ready to let go of my anger at her yet and admit that. I wasn’t sure which it was, and of course, none of that meant he couldn’t go after Jeremy.

She shoved my shoulder to get my attention, and I looked down at it before my gaze slid up to her. She immediately quit talking. Eyes wide, she looked from my shoulder to my face and back to my shoulder, like she’d just realized what I’d meant when I’d referenced all the times I’d let her do that to me in the past, and I flippantly said, “I hate your face. There is nowhere I can go to get away from it.” She froze, and then a moment later snorted. A couple of giggles followed, and I just watched her before saying, “In fact, I’d say there’s one more of these faces than we actually need, don’t you?”

Her laughter fell away as she warily asked, “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that you wouldn’t have been able to let me tell them that you’re here if you even suspected that’s what I was going to do, and I don’t actually know what happens to a vampire’s psyche when they fail to do what their sire wants, but something tells me that it’s more than merely being disappointed about it. At best, you would’ve gone into a shame spiral that might have ended with you removing your daylight ring and standing in front of a window. At worst, you could’ve killed them to keep your secret hidden. Is that what you want? Do you want to kill Caroline and Tyler now?” 

“No, of course not.” Her shoulders fell before she added, “I’m sure you could’ve thought of something though.”

“I’m glad you said that, because what I need is time to think, and you are going to help me get that.” 

Total confusion. “Wha – “ And then she started to get it, because she quickly shook her head. “No, I can’t – “

Grinning a wickedly, I interrupted her protest. “Ah, but you will. If they’re here, it’s going to stop me from being able to destroy the house, but if you’re me, and I’m in there with Klaus where they won’t go, I can still keep working away at it while I devise some sort of a plan. If you don’t do it, then you’d technically be stopping me from tearing this house apart. Damon told you not to do that either, and you’d better get used to it, because I’m telling you now that if they still look like they’re going to try and keep me here by the time those invisible barriers come down, they can do whatever they have planned for me to you. My guess would be sedation - probably with my own stash of sedatives, since y’all seem to like stealing my stuff.”

She quickly shook her head. “Eve, it’s Caroline. She wouldn’t do that to you.”

“If push came to shove, she would if it meant protecting you from an outsider, wouldn’t she?”

“But if she saw that I’m here, and that I’m fine, I’m sure – “

“And how is she going to do that when you can’t let her know you’re here?”

“I can call her and just tell her that it was all a big mistake. She doesn’t have to know I’m here when I do it.”

“Except she thinks you left your phone here in your haste to get away from me, so she’d probably still think it was me, and I’m curious about what you’d tell her was all a big mistake.” Elena paused, like she had no idea. It was just something she’d said to try and get me to do what she wanted. I shook my head in disappointment. “I don’t know who you think I am other than some cookie cutter version of an evil twin, but – “

“I don’t think you’re evil. I just think – “ She looked off to the side while she tried to think of how to put it, and I think I finally understood why she kept repeating things I’d said to her back to me. It’s because she didn’t think I’d understand what she was saying if I didn’t. That’s clearly the vibe I got from her as she said, “Every villain thinks they’re the hero of their own story, and right now you’re a villain, but I know you’re doing it because you’re trying to do what you think is the right thing. That doesn’t make you evil. It just makes you confused, and this curse isn’t helping.”

I’m not sure I had the words to respond to that, but I managed to find some after what felt like the longest 10 seconds of my life. “I’m not the one who is confused, and I guess if how you define a villain is as a person who doesn’t just step aside to let you do whatever you want regardless of what it is or who disagrees with you, then fine. I’ll wear that mantle . . . always thought I’d be that in your eyes anyway . . . but I didn’t turn into a zombie princess last night because of the curse. It is a separate entity that adapts to survive, but other than that, as long as I house it, then it takes all of its direction from me and my emotions. It must not have liked Bonnie’s Expression any more than I did last time, so it learned to protect itself from her, which is understandable, and apparently the two of us together were powerful enough to do it, because that’s what happened last night - the curse and I were in agreement. I’ve been back for a while now, and I’ve talked about it enough . . . Have you actually looked into it to find out what the 9th Circle was designed to do?” 

A closed mouth and dropped shoulders told me she hadn’t, so I said, “It punishes treachery. There are traitors to country, and they’re closer to Satan. While I did trip over their heads when everything was coming down around us, the outer round of the circle is where I spent most of my time. It’s where the traitors to their kindred go. It’s for the people who betrayed loved ones, family members, friends . . . That’s where Alec’s Dad was for reasons you don’t deserve to know. It’s where Cain went in _Dante’s Inferno_ for killing Abel . . . What happened was an alignment of the curse being designed to punish that, how I felt, and how powerfully I felt it, so that should tell you exactly how upset I, not my curse, am with you. What I said to you in the kitchen wasn’t just something I was saying, and it wasn’t an ultimatum. I told you what was going to happen, and you brushed it off with a, ‘Maybe it will, but –‘”

I watched her rapidly try to remember what I’d said and rolled my eyes. “Yeah, well, while you’re trying to remember that vital conversation, you might also want to ask yourself why it is that Bonnie can be housing something even more volatile, something that allowed her to shatter every window in the living room of the boarding house, and while I was fatally wounded, those shards didn’t go near anyone else, and – “

“She didn’t mean to do that!”

“Which is exactly my point. She doesn’t have control over Expression. She only thinks she does, and the next night it happened again. Not even you could get her to stop, because she couldn’t stop, and she wound up giving me seizures and brought me to the brink of death again, but she’s out there running around right now, using her powers, and there is still no talk of sending her to witch rehab, but I need to be locked away indefinitely . . . And for what, exactly? She was using her powers against me from the moment she got here last night, and me and my curse stood up to it once. Or was it because I staked you? I missed, and if you think I ever miss with a stake in my hand, I don’t. Or was it because I was doing the right thing for the reasons I’ve been saying all day, and y’all weren’t, but you still can’t see that, because it’s me, and I’m apparently your villain?” 

She opened her mouth, then shut it, and mostly just looked sad, so I said, “Anyway, I guess you’ll have a chance to see what it’s like to be me for a change. Should be fine for most of it, because it will be with Caroline and Tyler, but don’t be surprised if she is looking for any little indication that the others are right about my being a danger to myself or others, and if she thinks they are right, be prepared on the night of the full moon for them to get sneaky and try to sedate you for your own good. Of course it won’t work, because you’re a vampire, but you’ll just have to fake it until I’m gone, I suppose. That is when you can leave too, right?”

“But . . . “ Looking at the door, then Klaus, for what looked an awful lot like help, and then back to me, she said, “You need food. How are you going to eat if you’re in there hiding for the next two days?”

“If all else fails, you can get them to go home at night, so I can.”

“Eve, I can’t pull off being you. I can’t, and what happens if they figure out – “ 

She looked to the door in a panic, and I said, “Well, then I guess you wouldn’t have done what Damon wants, would you?” And that was the crux of the entire panic she was feeling right now, wasn’t it? With a smirk, I went to grab something out of the bag that I could eat before Caroline came back, grabbed a bag of blood that Caroline had probably brought to keep the hybrid I was locked in here with fed, and made my retreat. “Oh, and make sure you listen to music or something to block out any noise I might make.”


	65. I Can Read You Clearly Now

I heard the music cut out in the other room and stopped scratching away at the cement foundation under some floorboards that I'd ripped up in the corner before Caroline came back earlier. “Okay, what is going on with you?!”

 _Great job, Elena._ Couldn’t even get through the first couple of hours without tipping Caroline off, and so far all Elena had done was play music and read in a chair in the living room across from this one. “Nothing. I just want to read this.”

“But I thought you wanted to have some kind of service for Alice or something. Isn’t that why you sent me to get her different clothes? You didn’t want to change her, so I did, and now you can say goodbye.”

“I think it’s fairly normal for people not to want to touch people who have died, or they wouldn’t have funeral homes, Caroline.” 

My head whipped in the direction of the living room. The tone was right. The content was wrong. I wouldn’t have refused to change Alice’s clothes any more than I refused to build my Dad’s funeral pyre and set him on fire. I would’ve seen it as my responsibility to do it. I wouldn’t have run from it. “Okay, well, I know it can’t be easy, and I know you don’t handle these things very well, but I did the hard part for you, and they have funeral homes so people can say goodbye too. You need to do that before Tyler and I take her away.”

Wait, were they going to take her away tonight? I didn’t particularly like being locked up with her body as a constant reminder that she was dead, but I wanted to be there when she was buried, or were they going to burn her? What were they going to do with her? Had I missed all that while the music had been playing? Getting up from my place in the corner, I silently made my way to the space next to the door frame, so I could hear better. “What’s the point?” Closing my eyes, I touched my forehead to the wall and waited. There'd better be a good follow up to that one. “Or did you forget that I said what I had to say to her last night when she was still alive to hear it?” 

My eyes popped open, and I leaned back to look at the wall. That wasn’t half bad. “I know what you mean, but I still think you should say your final goodbyes. I think you’ll regret it if you don’t just like you regret missing part of your Dad’s funeral.”

“I didn’t miss – “

“Elena said the funeral was stupid, and you lost your temper. You went around with your torch setting the fire while you yelled at her, and you can’t tell me that’s how you wanted it to go. Then in your argument with her after that, you forgot all about setting the fire, so you missed part of it, and you can deny it all you want, but I know that upset you, just like I know that it upset you when she walked out in the middle of you giving your eulogy, but she’s not here to ruin it this time. Tyler isn’t even here because he’s off trying to find you a sled, so it’ll just be me.”

Oh, uh, yeah, bitching about Elena to Elena wasn't something I'd considered might happen. Long pause, and then a snappy, “I said no, Caroline.”

I mean I understood her irritation, but Caroline wasn’t going to like that at all. “You’re being childish. Seriously, what has gotten into you?” Brief pause as she tried to calm herself down, and Caroline tried, “Would it help if I said I’m your friend too?”

Like she did at Dad’s funeral, because I’d been meeting everyone for the first time, and it was a tough crowd? If I'd read her wrong this afternoon, then yeah, it probably would help, but I wasn't convinced that I'd read her wrong. If I'd been right, then I was fine with Elena snidely asking, “Why would that help?” but she needed to follow it up with something, like calling Caroline's motives into question, which could have been done even if she didn't know what Caroline had been referencing. She didn't do that, so it came across as her simply forgetting about the first time I admitted Caroline was my friend. 

“Because it’s what I said . . . You know what? Forget it. I wasn’t sure what to think, but now I’m starting to think that maybe everyone was right. You have lost it.”

“Yeah, well if I have, can you blame me? It does seem to only be people I care about who keep dying around here.” My head tilted to the side. Hm. Maybe Elena had been listening to me while I ranted today. 

“I’m sure Elena didn’t know that Alice would die.”

“I’m sure she didn’t either . . . Do you think it would’ve changed anything if she had?”

“Honestly? No.“

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because she knew Kol was your friend, and – “

“I never said he was my friend.”

“Oh, come on, Eve, you never say anyone is your friend unless it’s me or Damon, and it took you ages to even admit that. I bet if I asked you right now you wouldn’t even say that Alice was your friend. It’s like you’re allergic to the word, but it’d take a blind person not to see how protective you were of Kol after he’d been bitten. I mean, that’s how it started with me.”

“What do you mean?” I tossed an annoyed look at the wall. That was strictly an Elena question that she was asking so she could snoop in on business that wasn’t hers. 

“The day we met you wouldn’t even let Damon suggest the idea of killing me to keep your secret, and then later that day you started training me, so I wouldn’t be scared of Katherine. You were always annoying me and saying things that were mean, but then you insisted on being there when Tyler turned the first time so you could protect me, and even though I kept telling you I hated you the whole way back because you wouldn’t stop teasing me about liking Tyler, the second I said I smelled dog at the boarding house, you put herself between me and whatever was in there. Then you annoyed me to make me leave after we saw Rose’s bite, and a couple days later when those werewolves had me . . . “

She paused with a sigh before saying, “I know you were already there to kill them, and I know why, but I also know that you killed at least the leader because he was torturing me. I don’t care how much you deny it. I was there too, so I know, and nothing you say will change my mind about it . . . When he brought me outside, I knew that it was you even though I couldn’t see your face, and I remember thinking that everything would be okay if I could just get to you, so that’s the first thing I did when I finally got away from them. I ran to you, and it might’ve been just about the worst time for it, but you let me hug you even though you hate hugs on a good day . . . Then when I was leaving, I told you he hurt me, and you said you knew, and he’d never hurt anyone ever again, but it was the way you said it, like I was a little kid, who’d had a nightmare, but you were there now, and I didn’t have to be scared of him anymore, because you were going to take care of it, so I know that’s why you killed him . . . You push people away. If they don’t have a huge amount of determination, they won’t pass your test. If they do, then on a whim you’ll say they’re your friend one day, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t their friend all along.” 

Meh, she was romanticizing that entire werewolf incident. A long pause, and then an accusatory, “Have you ever said any of that to Elena?” I rolled my eyes. I absolutely would not have ever wanted Caroline to say any of that to anyone, including me.

“What?”

“Don’t you think it’s something she should’ve known?” Finally catching herself, Elena added, “I mean, maybe none of this would’ve happened if she had.”

Sounding wary, Caroline said, “I don’t see how.”

“Well, if she’d known all that, she might’ve seen things differently from day one, but nobody ever tells her anything she needs to know about her sister, just like nobody told her about Alice.” Throwing my hands up in frustration, I let them fall silently on top my head. Why the hell would I say something like that? She must've known she'd nearly blown it, because she tried to change the subject and sounded a little anxious doing it. “Did Stefan know?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about right now. You really aren’t acting like yourself.”

“About Alice?”

Okay, I wouldn't mind having the answer to that one myself, because he for sure knew about the plot against Kol. “Alice was pretty private on the details of her past. The only reason you knew who turned her was because you asked Elijah before you even brought her here, so unless you told Stefan, then I’d say probably not.” 

I knew I told Caroline, and I told Damon. I wasn't sure if I'd said anything to Stefan or if Alice had, but as soon as Kol came onto the scene, the rest of them should have figured it out if they didn’t already know because of how she’d reacted to Kol. Something didn’t feel quite right about Caroline’s answer, and a second later, Elena said, “But I feel like it’s something he probably did know if he lived with her . . . especially when Kol was there, because – “

“Well, he’s been a little preoccupied lately.”

Elena grumbled, “With Rebekah. I know,” and Caroline laughed.

“I know you think he needs to give Elena a chance to grow up and figure out what she wants, and it’s obvious he’s trying to win her back by making her jealous, but I really think you just need to let that one go, because they’re perfect for one another.”

Quick as a whip, Elena shot back, “So, he probably did know, and he didn’t say anything, because he didn’t want to stop her from getting the cure . . . just like everyone else around here.” Not bad. 

“Um . . . I really don’t think it would’ve changed anything even if Elena did know, Eve.”

“It might have if she’d had all the information.”

I shook my head again. She kept slipping into straight up defending herself. “Are you kidding me? Look, I’m sure she’s sorry about what happened to Alice, but if it was a choice between Alice and Jeremy, then I’d say even Alice would’ve chosen Jeremy.“ That was probably true, actually. 

“So that means you would have too, right? You don’t exactly seem all that sad about it or even angry, and I thought you and Alice were supposed to be friends.” 

I rolled my eyes again. I couldn’t see her expression to be sure, but she was either still defending herself by getting someone else to agree that they would’ve done the same thing, or she was just trying to drag Caroline down with her, like if I was upset with her, then she wanted me to be just as upset with Caroline. I think it might’ve been a bit of both to be honest. “Okay . . . If you want the truth, I liked Alice, but if it came down to her or one of us, then I choose us.“

Yeah, I’d figured that, but Elena took issue with Caroline’s phrasing. “One of us?” A brief pause, and then she said, “How do you define ‘us’? Because if the people I care about are the only ones who keep being sacrificed, then it makes me wonder . . . ” Again, mostly Elena talking as herself, because it sounded like she was figuring something out in the process. Apparently, she didn’t like what I presume was a reluctant look from Caroline, because she quickly added, “Well, I guess it makes me wonder if it’s only a matter of time before it’s me.” My head cocked to the side again. Standing ovation for the twin. That is something that was in the back of my mind, and Damon said it enough. “What? You think so too, don’t you?”

Caroline sighed. “I think . . . that I love you, and that’s made me selfish, because I don’t want you to leave, but I think what might be best for you is if you did leave when this is all over.”

I couldn’t agree more, and if she was okay with it, then I was out of here. I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders that I hadn’t realized was there, but Elena? Elena didn’t take that well at all. “What do you mean when this is all over? When they get the cure, or - ”

“As soon as Bonnie’s spell wears off, I think it would be best if you aren’t here when they get back.” 

Well, that was a positive sign. Caroline must still be undecided but leaning towards not helping the others keep me here. “Why? What are you going to do if I don’t?”

Another sigh. “Eve . . . “

“I think you should go.” 

Well, that was one way to get Caroline to swing the other way on it. “What?! Why?”

“If you’re only here to keep an eye on me until – “

“That’s not what I’m doing!”

“But it’s what they want you to do, isn’t it? They want you to keep me here until they come back. Did Elena say it, or was it someone else?”

“We’ve already been through this. I told you what she said. You know what? I think I will leave, because I don’t need this. I’m here because I’m your friend and to keep you company. I’ll be back tomorrow. Hopefully, you’re in a better mood, and you’ll be able to think about somebody other than yourself long enough for us to give Alice a proper funeral.” 

5, 4, 3, 2 – I heard what was left of the front door slam shut, waited until I heard her car door close to make sure she was really gone, and stepped away from the wall to stand in the doorway with a stance that clearly conveyed my disapproval. “What the hell was that? Sometimes you got it right, but most of the time you were either – “ She’d started moving in this direction before I’d even made my presence known, but I wasn’t expecting her to march into the room with Klaus and I, so all I did was take a startled step back before she threw her arms around me. “What the fuck are you doing? Get off of me.”

I tried to push her off, and she wouldn’t budge, just held on tighter whenever I tried. _I should knock us both down and then elbow her in the stomach. That’d loosen her grip._ I was just about to do that when she exhaled a sob. "Uh . . . What's happening right now?" All I got in response was another quiet sob. Was she coming to me for comfort? Attempting to prove something by braving the dangers of being around Klaus, or did she simply wanted a hug because Caroline had gotten half of one during the werewolf massacre?

My eyes darted to Klaus. He was standing where he'd been on the opposite side of the door frame from where I'd been, presumably because he'd been curious about the show in the other room and had been quietly hoping that Caroline would acknowledge him. She hadn't, and as a consolation prize, here was Elena, not that far from him. He had a bet to honor with me, but she sure was testing him by being there. His eyes said as much when he looked at me. 

'Remove her immediately,' came through loud and clear before he registered my confusion and the extreme discomfort that was written all over my face, and then his expression went from, 'Oh, you want me to help?' to 'Well, tough. You're the one who let this happen, so you can get rid of her yourself,' and then a slight smirk that said, 'Actually, I wouldn't mind seeing that.' He moved to the other entryway and casually leaned against it before giving me a hand jester saying, 'Please, proceed,' and I sighed.

Stuffing my hands in my pockets, I grumbled, “You about done?” She shook her head, and I heard her huff out another sob. I tried to turn away from her. Nope. Couldn’t budge. 

“So, it’s looking like I would’ve done a worse job against the girl from _The Ring_ , than I thought.” I'd never thought that girl would be a difficult foe, but she did come through the TV screen the way Elena had come through that doorway, and I hadn't particularly handled that well. “I mean, did she actually do anything other than psychologically terrorize people for a week before scaring them to death?” Still nothing. “How about now?” Another shake of her head, and I looked up at the ceiling with a frustrated sigh. “Suppose she was a psychic though, so she was doing more than just scaring them. Think I might start looking into them next, since I can technically cross a revenant off my list, but oh, what a pathetic revenant he was.” When she still didn’t get off of me with that, I said, “You know there are two of us here, right . . . why don’t you try this with Klaus?”

Finally, she said a teary, “I didn’t leave you here to die.” Apparently, I didn’t respond fast enough for her, because she wasn’t long in saying, “You think I did, don’t you?”

“I think I want you to get off of me.”

“Not until you tell me the truth.”

“All right, the truth is, no . . . I don’t think you left me here to die, because I could’ve called Meredith if she wasn’t working, or Caroline to get the pills in my room if I wasn’t being obstinate about it, so if I almost died, then it was my own fault. Now, let me go.”

“Not until I get the whole truth, and I don’t believe you. Why did they both say it?”

“You’d have to ask them.”

“I’m asking you.”

“When was the last time you ate, because you really are being exceptionally moody.“

“Just answer the question.”

“Or maybe the stress of being here is getting to you, and you’re starting to crack up a bit.” 

“Eve.”

“Certainly did an excellent job of making the case that I’m insane for the kangaroo court.” 

“Stop it!”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Then why won’t you just answer the question?”

“Who knows why they said it? I’m not a mind reader.”

“You’re pretty close to it.”

“Fine. Then I can see how it might seem like negligence, but I’m a big girl who can take care of myself, so don’t sweat it.” 

I tried to step back, but she came with me. “I said I want the whole truth.”

“Oh my god, this is the most idiotic interrogation technique I’ve ever heard of or seen.” I didn’t think it started as one, but it’d definitely become one. 

“I know you don’t think you’re one of us. You’re always saying ‘you people,’ or ‘you guys’ or ‘the others,’ but you are one of us. We wouldn’t sacrifice you for - ”

“Okay, I see we’ve crossed over to fantasy land, because you did it yourself just last night, and that’s not even getting into the rest of them.”

A ragged breath, and she sounded teary again as she said, “I’m not like Isobel and John. I’m not.”

And just like that, I had an epiphany. She only compared herself to them to hide deeper truths. “You do feel guilty for letting yourself think that I was taking people from you that I had no business taking before you even knew I was alive and for that being why it took you so long to give me a chance, but that isn’t what you feel is actually your greatest sin, the one you think is so bad you can’t admit the truth to yourself or me. The guilt from that is really what has fueled every interaction, good and bad, that you have had with me, particularly since you turned, because that’s when it became more apparent to you.”

“What are you saying?”

“You want there to be something there, because you feel sympathy for me, but that’s where it ends - compassion.”

At that, she finally let me go to look at me, but I kept going, so she couldn’t respond with what was sure to be a denial until I was done. “It makes you feel guilty, and it’s why you have your outbursts every so often, like the one you just had with Caroline about how maybe it would’ve changed things from day one if you’d heard her highly romanticized version of the werewolf massacre story, or why it seemed like you were being so possessive right after you turned and were a more emotionally mixed up baby vampire, and it’s even why you look for a connection to my family through things like the dagger, my ring, a tea set, or a handful of holes I left in a tree over a decade ago at the lake house despite the fact that I’m standing right in front of you . . . You’re searching for that one thing that will make you feel what you think you should for me, but don’t and won’t, and on top of that, you’re too afraid to let go, mostly because your parents dying traumatized you, and you don’t want to lose anyone even if they don’t mean anything to you . . . It’s like when you told Dad that he ruined everything he touched, but since he was the only parent you had left, you could learn not to hate him.” 

“That’s not true.”

“It is. I was standing around the corner when you said it, so I heard every word.”

“You what?” Her eyes scrunched shut as she tried to refocus, “No, what I meant was everything else you just said.”

“I know what you meant. I was being intentionally obtuse . . . It’s something that I do. Sometimes it’s real. Most of the time it isn’t, because it’s good for making your opponent think you’re weak minded or to side-track them, the way you almost were, or to just generally annoy people, which is a tactic in and of itself for various reasons. It’s okay if you don’t know that about me, because while it may be for an entirely different reason, I’ve had a hard time reading you too. You’re the only person who consistently throws me off my game, and I couldn’t figure it out for the longest time – that kind of thing would fall under the real obtuseness category. Then Alec said you’re a terrible liar, and he thought that maybe the reason I couldn’t see through your lies is because you’re the one person I don’t want to lie to me, which falls under a third category of obtuseness – self-delusion - something I clearly learned to survive my parents. I know they did the best they could, because I know they loved me, but they screwed up a lot along the way. Now that they’re gone, more and more of the truth that I’ve always known is something I can admit now, but that takes time.”

Looking extremely wary, Elena said, “Is this where you say something mean?”

I didn’t think it was that bad, but I couldn’t help the flicker of a smile that got out of me before I said, “With you, I don’t have years of damage to sort through, so after 24-hours of grieving with shock, denial, and anger, I must’ve just skipped right to acceptance, because I can read you clearly now, so yeah, everything I said about you trying to force something that just isn’t there, out of guilt and fear, is true, and I’m okay with that. More than okay. It’s actually kind of liberating to be honest.”

It was. The bell had been rung, and I may have lost, but the lifelong struggle for a sister that’d been taken from me the day we were born was over. I felt totally at ease . . . Okay, maybe not totally, because there was a part of me that felt an awful lot like it was really only starting the grieving process now, but fuck letting her know that. She was already going to make it more difficult than it needed to be. “No, don’t say that. It isn’t true. Just give me a chance, and I’ll prove it to you.”

“What more proof do either of us need?”

“I screwed up again . . . worse than I did at the bonfire, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.”

“But I can fix it.”

“No.” There were just some things you couldn’t take back. 

Her shoulders fell. “I don’t believe that. I’ll find a way to – “

“It’ll be okay, Elena.” 

She lost a tear, and shook her head. “No . . . I promise I won’t let anyone do anything to you. You can’t leave.”

“Elena, I’ve done nothing but beat the shit out of you, bitch at you, or tear your house apart all day. You’ll be fine without me the way you were before you met me. I was planning to go big game hunting anyway. Even if I can stop them from raising Silas, I have a whole host of other hunts, like the one I did in Savannah, that I’ve been putting off while I’ve been dealing with everything here. I was a little concerned about how Caroline would take it if I left, but if she’s okay with it, then – “

“You were doing so well. Don’t give up now. I won’t let you.”

“Won’t let me what?”

“Leave. Because if you do, all that means is that you’ve given up on having anything that even resembles normal.”

“Yeah, see, I used to think that, but now I think staying here is holding me back.”

“Are you trying to annoy me?”

“Yes, because I’m done talking about this. I have more important things to do, like trying to dig a tunnel to see if it can be done.“

“What if I helped you with it?”

“I thought you didn’t want me to leave, and now you want to help me do the very thing that might make it easier for me escape?” 

“No, you’re twisting everything around. Stop it.”

“Mm . . . ‘Stop it.’ Getting flashbacks of Mom and Dad right now.”

Clenching her fists by her side, she growled in frustration and then quickly said, “You make me so angry.”

“I can see that . . . Maybe it’s a sign that you should leave me alone.”

“No, because that’s exactly what you want me to do.”

“What gave it away?”

She reached back with her arm, but it was really more of a human punch speed, so I didn’t have any trouble catching her wrist when her fist flew in my direction. The next thing she knew, she had been flipped over onto her back again. I bent at the waist to look down at her, and she looked up at me with a scowl. With a smirk, I wiggled my fingers at her, and she slapped my hand away saying, “Ugh, you make me feel violent. That’s how angry you make me.”

“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing I’m not going to be here for much longer. Wouldn’t want Saint Elena to get a bad name, would we?”

She took another swing at me from the ground. “Don’t call me that!”

“Why?” I pouted before saying, “Is it because everyone around here thinks you are a saint, and it’s a lot of pressure to live up to it when you’re far from being one?” She swatted at me again, and I backed away from her as she started to get up. “Let me ask you something.” She hesitated in her approach, as I said, “Do you remember what I had you do after you killed Connor?” 

She came to a complete stop. “You had me think about everything good about him and then everything bad about him to see if the bad out-weighed the good, and it did.”

“That’s my personal view on morality, one I derived a long time ago, and whether or not Damon is around to remind me of it before I do something wrong, it's still what guides me now . . . It takes the emotion out of it when making a split second decision. Does what I’m about to do or have done have a net positive or negative? If it’s a net positive, then I’m fine with it. If it’s a net negative, then I know I’ve done something wrong, or it’s the wrong action to take. In general, I try to be the lightest shade of grey possible when I can, because I think that’s all we can do since none of us are perfect, and some of us have a lot more wars to fight, so we aren’t all going to be a nice light shade of grey. It’s about just trying for the lightest shade possible given what we face . . . Now, clearly, you didn’t weigh up the positives and the negatives last night . . . and you haven’t taken the time to do it today even though I’ve been listing out all the negatives for what you did, so I want you do that without emotion being involved tonight, and I want you to do the same thing about whether it’s better for me to go or stay, and tomorrow, you can plead your case, but if I stay, it won’t be for you. It’ll be because it’s the most logical choice.”

She relaxed before giving me a nod, and I added, “So, why don’t you go do that somewhere else. I need to start putting new plans in place for tomorrow.”

“You don’t want me to be you tomorrow?”

“God, no. You managed to take a flamethrower to my friendship with Caroline in about 10 minutes . . . I need to fix that, and I think I just came up with a better plan anyway.”

“What is it?”

“A secret, and the only one I trust it with is me.”


	66. Taking Back Control

“Well, at least she turned the water off.” My eyes slowly opened, and I blinked. Must’ve fallen asleep at some point while I was reading through one of Grayson’s old medical books and had apparently made myself quite comfortable. I was all over the chair. I had a leg up on an arm of it, one foot on the floor, and my head was on the other arm. Reaching for my pocket, I checked it for messages, saw _All set. Keep me updated. I mean it_ , and it made me smile. 

Stuffing the phone in my pocket, I turned my head in the direction of the front door where the hushed whispers were and quickly sat up. “You brought my guitar?!”

They were both carrying something, but Caroline was holding my guitar case in her hand, and I only had eyes for that. I needed to play something on either my guitar or my piano almost as much as I needed air to breathe. Looking cool and aloof, as I got to them, Caroline turned her head the other way saying, “Yeah, well, I thought it might keep you from doing any more damage to Elena’s house if I brought it.”

 _Yeah, all right. Just give me the damn guitar._ “Thanks.”

She finally looked at me, and my outstretched hand. “Not until we have a proper service for Alice . . . You should go get cleaned up.”

Oh. My confused expression seemed to spur Tyler into action. “And check this out.” I looked at the bundle in his hands, and my heart skipped a beat. Was that the sword? I went to it, and he said, “We thought maybe you might be able to help us, since you’re smart, and you like to figure stuff out.”

“I take it this is what you were getting and not a sled.” Of course I wasn’t going to let them use me to get what they wanted, but I did have a thing for unique weapons, and it was freaking sword from like 900 years ago. “Can I see it?” 

“Sure. It’s heavier than it looks, but - 

“Tyler.” He and I looked at Caroline, and she forced herself to smile, but she sure wasn’t doing a very good job of covering how annoyed she was. “I thought we agreed.”

“Come on, Care, what’s she gonna do?”

“Tyler!” 

Exhaling a laugh, I looked between the two. “So . . . I’m guessing Nurse Ratched doesn’t want the patient having any sharp objects.” Rolling my eyes, I said, “If it’s heavy, I hardly think I’m going to be able to use it to hack anyone to pieces . . . I mostly just want to try – “

“Eve, we’re on a busy schedule. Are you going to get ready, or not?”

“Hope it’s not too busy of a schedule.” 

“Our lives don’t revolve around you, Eve.”

“And thank fuck for that.” I smirked at the annoyed expression on her face before adding, “No, I just hardly think it’d be fair to Alice’s memory if she weren’t paid the proper respect that she’s due, don’t you?” 

Her shoulders fell somewhat, and I tossed her a chastising look with a little tut on my way past her to the stairs. After brushing my teeth, I was in and out of the shower in record time before I went into Elena’s room to find something to wear. She was sitting on her bed with a journal and murmured, “Thanks for turning the water off last night.”

No need to remind her that we had to be quiet with two extra pairs of supernatural ears downstairs. I'd barely heard that. Suppose I should respond in kind. “Meh, can’t exactly have everyone’s feet but mine burning in several inches of water, can I? Is it okay if I borrow something?”

She got up to go to her closet. “What were you thinking?” She looked through what was hanging up, and I grabbed a pair of black jeans, a blood red shirt, and a long lightweight black cardigan jacket. Looking at the cardigan jacket again, I asked, “Is this what you wore when you killed Connor?”

“Uh . . . Yeah. You can keep that . . . and what about this instead?”

She pulled a black dress out for me to see. It was nice, but more her than me. “You should wear it. You and I can do our own service . . . I’ll let you know when the coast is clear?” 

She gave me a hesitant nod before reaching for something else and pulled out a lightweight black leather jacket. “What about this?”

I liked it. I mean it’d be tight on the arms, so I’d never be able to hide a stake up the sleeves, but I liked the look of it. “You don’t think I should wear the cardigan?”

“I did kill someone wearing it. I’m not sure it’s appropriate.”

For a funeral? Seemed like that would make it more appropriate to me. Taking the leather jacket off its hanger, she offered it to me, and I reluctantly took it. “You’re sure?”

“Well, you’re just borrowing it, right?”

“Yeah, but my clothes do have a tendency to get ruined.”

“I don’t think anything is going to happen to you today. It’ll be fine.” 

I guess we’d see about that. I took the clothes into the bathroom to get changed and came back after drying my hair on a cold setting. “You’re not getting ready.”

“I thought – “

“If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s clear a room, right?” 

She smiled before getting up from her bed again and went to her closet. “You’re in a better mood today.”

“Caroline brought my guitar, and I get to play with a sword. It’s shaping up to be a much better day. Just have to get through the funeral . . . should probably consider doing something for Klaus too. He’s been locked in a room with his brother for a day and a half.”

Her mouth drew into a thin line before she nodded, like that was probably something that should be dealt with, but she wasn’t really looking forward to anyone bringing it up, and I was right there with her to be honest. I turned to leave and stopped when she said, “Hey.” I looked back, and she sighed before flicking her hand in the direction of her journal. “I did what you said . . . I can see why you think what I did was wrong . . . and I’m not giving up, but I also don’t have enough to convince you to stay.”

I offered her the flicker of a smile. “I didn’t think you would . . . but like I said, it’ll be okay.”

“I’d like it if you did though.”

Ducking my head, I nodded. “Yeah, well . . . “ Tilting my head in the direction of the door, I continued, “I should probably go. I don’t want Tyler to have too much time to antagonize Klaus . . . Be ready in 5.” 

“5?”

“Yeah . . . Alice would’ve liked it if it was just the two of us first. She did always want us to be sisters . . . guess it’s because she had issues with her own sister.”

“She was Alice’s protector, wasn’t she?” 

I nodded, and Elena looked to the side as she blinked back a couple of tears. “Okay, I’ll be ready. Just let me know when the coast is clear.”

“Will do.” I left the room and bounded down the stairs saying, “Okay, let’s get this show on the road.”

Caroline seemed offended by my demeanor for some reason. “You’re a little cheery for a funeral, don’t you think?”

So says one of the people who was perfectly fine with Alice being dead as long as it meant one of her own hadn’t died. Clamping down on my irritation, I looked to the door where Alice was. “Well, I told her I was handing her off to her sister, so if she’s with her in peace rather than on the Other Side, then I’m happy for her.”

“Yeah, but this is a final goodbye for you, so you can get closure before Tyler and I take her to bury her.”

“But closure is what I had with her.” It finally occurred to me what she really meant. “Oh, you want me to not be angry about it, so I don’t act out.”

She cautiously answered, “You do have a tendency to do that.”

“It’s not like I went on a murderous rampage after Alec died.”

“Eve, you could've easily let Imelda get rid of that talisman, but instead, you let yourself die, went to Hell, and then came back with a curse!”

“Saved him and the others who were imprisoned there though, didn’t I?”

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself or anyone else. You’re under a lot of stress right now, and – “

“Despite what you’ve heard, I’m not unstable, Caroline.”

“Well, you could’ve fooled me after last night!”

“I don’t think this is an appropriate frame of mind to be having a funeral in either, is it?” Her shoulders fell again, and I added, “Let’s just take a moment to breathe, so we can do this right.” Going to the coat rack, I picked up a knitted hat with strings and came back with it before adding, “Starting with this - we should all give Alice our undivided attention. No cell phones.”

Taking Elena’s phone that I’d pocketed from her room, I put it the hat, so they’d feel comfortable doing the same, and then held the opened hat out in their direction. They shared a cautious look, but if them thinking I’d lost it had any benefits, it seemed to be that they wanted to placate me. Finally, Caroline sighed before taking her phone out of her pocket and dropped it into the hat. Tyler followed suit, and I tied the top closed. I made like I was going to put the hat of phones on the stairs, and the second that Caroline and Tyler started to turn towards the room where Alice was, I threw the hat of phones into the room with Klaus.

Catching the movement out of the corner of her eye, Caroline turned back. “Did you just – “ Her eyes widened, when she saw where the hat was. It’d landed neatly beside Klaus, who was standing in the doorway still waiting for anyone to acknowledge him while also being content to stay silent and observe his enemies in action, or I presume that’s what he was doing. I did the same thing myself from time to time. “Why would you do that?!”

That yell out of Caroline should just about do it. Going to the front door, I opened it, slammed it shut as hard as I could, and had to dodge out of the way as it finally gave up and died. The moment it landed on the floor with a loud bang, I burst out in a wicked laugh while putting my hand up to keep Caroline from throwing a fit on my way to the bottom of the stairs to yell, “Elena! They’re gone! You can come down now.”

Caroline opened her mouth to say something, and I put my finger in front of my lips to silently shoosh her. Her eyes flew to the stairs at the first creak, and I saw the bottoms of Elena’s shoes as she started to come into view. “How long do we have before – “

Looking like a deer in headlights, she stopped when Caroline came to stand next to me, and I quickly said, “It’s okay.” Elena’s eyes darted to me in terror, and I pointed back to where the front door should be saying, “He told you that you couldn’t let anyone outside the house know, didn’t he? Their phones are over there with Klaus, and they can’t get out of the house now either. Your secret’s still safe from anyone out there.” Elena wouldn’t stop looking like she was about to burst into tears before dropping dead of a heart attack if someone didn’t show her what I meant. Caroline wanted to know what was happening. Luckily, Tyler rushed to the threshold, and yeah, there was an invisible barrier up for him now too. “She’s right.” 

“What?!” Shoving past him, Caroline tested it herself, and when she saw she couldn’t leave, she turned back to face me. “What did you do?!”

Change my mind on Imelda not ever coming back here. I figured it should be safe if she was here as long as nobody else knew she was. Putting on my best bad impersonation of a Southern Belle, I touched my hand to my chest and drawled, “Why Caroline Forbes, I am so very humbled that you believe me capable of such a feat.” Her lips were pursed in something I would call an angry pout, her eyes were narrowed, and there was a nice crease going on in her forehead. Dropping the accent, I asked conspiratorially, “What? Is only one of us allowed to be dramatic when it suits?”

“Why would you – “ 

With a smirk, I walked away from her and towards my guitar saying, “I like to think of it as taking back control to the extent that I can.”

As Caroline got in my path to try and block me from the thing I wanted most right now, Elena zoomed between us looking more like herself. “It’s the only way you could see me and her at the same time. That’s why she did it.” 

Actually, it’d been both an act of self-preservation and my next move in the battle over Silas. Yes, if Caroline and Tyler saw Elena and knew she wasn’t whatever wreck Katherine had been portraying her as yesterday, it worked in my favor as far as convincing them that I was fine went, so they were less likely to try and detain me, but it also preserved what was left of my friendship with them. Even if they’d done whatever they’d considered doing to me to Elena, I’d still feel like it was an insurmountable betrayal, because they would have thought it was me, and it probably would have been one blow too many for me to take, but now, they couldn’t do what they might have done tomorrow. They wouldn’t have wanted to go a violent route. I could credit them with that much. That’s why I was sure some kind of sedative would have been involved, but I’d locked them up a day earlier than they’d thought they’d need it, so they shouldn’t have any on them. 

Locking them in here also allowed me to keep an eye on them, but more importantly, it allowed me to keep track of the messages the others were sending Caroline, because I didn’t believe for a second she’d be honest with me about it. In fact, her attitude hadn’t improved much at Elena’s words. She just stopped looking at me and focused on Elena. “If you expect me to believe you’re really Elena, and not Eve, and that’s not Katherine, then – “

“Why would you think I’m Eve?!” 

Hm. Which Katherine should I give her? The faux buddy-buddy act that she used just before she went on the attack should work. With a smirk, my entire posture changed, and I shoved the sleeves of the leather jacket up my arms before moving around Elena, with Katherine’s saunter saying, “I told you I’d do a better job playing Elena.” I circled around Caroline, close enough to be menacing and uncomfortable, but not too close. Amused and charmingly cold, my eyes stayed on Caroline the entire time. She would feel more confident if she didn’t believe she was locked in a house with Katherine, but as it was, she had to work hard not to cringe away from me as I got to just over her right shoulder, and my eyes flicked to Elena. “It’s so much more difficult to wipe all trace of a personality and make yourself so believably . . . bland.” 

My eyebrow arched in amusement at Elena’s aghast expression, and I would have said more, but Tyler was watching me. There’s obviously no way he’d let Katherine hurt his girlfriend, or even let her say as much as I had to Caroline without stepping in, but I was fairly certain he knew I wasn’t Katherine because of my scent or my eyes or the way I’d been acting before my little personality shift, something, because with a confused expression, he finally said, “Uh, Care . . . “ 

I quickly grabbed my guitar case and ran around the other side of him to get back to where I’d started behind Elena, and Elena’s head snapped in my direction. “Would you stop it?!”

“What? I had to liberate my guitar. It was being held hostage.” At the annoyed look on her face, I rolled my eyes. “Just tell her about your first day of second grade, and then you can prove to her that you’re really you.”

Elena looked from me to Caroline and said, “I, um . . . Second grade? Is that when you were all excited because your Dad got you Princess Sparkle as a going back to school present, and at recess you – “

Caroline finished for her. “Taught you how to braid her hair, and the three of us took turns doing it until we got it right.”

“More like you made us do it until you thought we did it right.”

“Elena?”

Nudging her with his elbow to get her attention, Tyler said, “See, I told you something sounded off about last night. It didn't sound like Eve at all.”

Caroline was quick to not give him any credit. “You didn’t say it was Elena.” Turning back to Elena, she asked, "It was you, right?" Elena slowly nodded, and Caroline's whole face fell as she realized she'd said some things to her that she wished she hadn't. Forcing herself to relax, she gave her a contrite smile. “I guess it does make more sense now that I think about it . . . What are you doing here?”

Ducking around Elena’s head, so I could see Caroline over her shoulder, I interrupted their conversation. “Actually, that can wait. I thought we had a funeral to do, and FYI, we really should be having two of them.” It wasn’t just Alice who had died.

Caroline huffed out a frustrated, “Argh, just stop talking. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

Elena’s shoulders fell. “I know the Katherine thing was a bit much, but after the last couple of days that she’s had, letting her see something that’ll make her feel better and keeping it just out of her reach wasn’t all that nice either.”

“Are you kidding me?! She locked us in this house!”

“I know, but it isn’t like we didn’t do the same thing to her.”

“Because she almost killed you. Why are you defending her?”

Well, that was easy. “I’ve had a day and a half to wear her down mentally and make her my minion.”

Looking at me over her shoulder, Elena murmured, “She’s right. You should stop talking. You really aren’t doing yourself any favors right now.” 

“It’s true though.”

“I’m not your minion.”

“You’re acting like one.”

“No, I’m acting like a sister, and since you clearly don’t know what to say here, I’ll tell you. You say, ‘If you only heard that I almost killed Elena, then you didn’t get the full story, because Elena, got Jeremy to kill two people I liked, a lot of other vampires who were probably innocent, and almost killed me too, because she was being selfish.’”

My brow furrowed in confusion. “Yeah, no, I’m fairly certain I’ve just broken you down. The only thing you’re forgetting is the part about Silas . . . and the fact that I staked you two more times yesterday.”

Her eyes widened. “Don’t say that!”

“Why?”

“Because – “ Cutting herself off, she quickly asked, “Are you really being obtuse right now or faking it?!”

“Merely stating the truth.”

Slapping her hand to her forehead, she muttered, “I think I finally understand what you meant when you said you generally get in trouble for being too honest now.” Turning her head to look at me under her hand, she added, “I know you know how to keep secrets, so why would you tell them everything if it’s just going to make you look worse to them . . . Do you want them to see you as bad?”

“Well, I’m certainly not a victim if that’s the role you want me to play, and I’m hardly an angel. I’ve never claimed to be. Why would I start now?”

She dropped her hand in exasperation, and Caroline said, “What do you mean you almost killed her too?”

Great. So, the victim narrative was the one that’d stuck. Elena and I looked at her. I was going to reply, but Elena turned to put her hand over my mouth, so I was busy smacking it away as she said, “I mean that I bit her, and it wasn’t for any other reason than I was angry, and – “

“Actually, I shot Jeremy in the foot, so . . . “

Hands clenched by her sides, Elena’s head slowly turned in my direction as she gritted out, “Stop talking!” Turning back to Caroline, she quickly rushed out, “I bit her, and it was bad, like really bad, and then I shot her with a crossbow, and she was bleeding everywhere . . . and then I left her here in a house she couldn’t get out of if she needed help, so Damon sent me back here to save her and stay as long as she was here, but Klaus is actually the reason she’s still alive.”

Caroline’s eyes immediately shot in the direction of Klaus, so while she’d been making a conscious effort to ignore him, she knew exactly where he was, and I’d say that look, however confused and almost appreciative as it was, was worth being ignored to him if it’s the first look he got from her. Tearing her eyes away from him, she asked, “Where does Katherine come into it? I take it that if you two are here, she is who is with Bonnie right now.”

Elena answered that one too. “Damon . . . or we think it was Damon. Did you guys even bother to go down and see if he’s still there, because apparently, he’s been able to get out the whole time.”

Caroline and Tyler shared a look, and Caroline said, “We thought you told us that you’d left him with enough blood to last him until you got back.”

Hm. If Katherine said that, I wouldn’t be shocked if that’s actually what she’d done after really locking him in there without his phone. On the other hand, he might have filled her in on his plan and then gotten the hell out of there before she even got to town, so she was merely covering for him, because it served her purposes better if everyone was focused on the cure and not on who was chasing them right now. If he wasn’t in his cell, and I was like 85-90% sure that he wasn’t, because these people had essentially set him back to the original settings he’d had when he first arrived into town looking to rescue Katherine from the tomb, then he was playing this smart, sneaky, and was definitely trailing them. I wondered what my dark horse was actually planning to do. Whatever it was, I’d know where they were when Imelda told me where he was, so that would be helpful, or I could just ask. “Where did they go?”

“Like I’d tell you.” 

Caroline wasn’t angry about what she thought I’d said to her last night or me almost killing Elena anymore. There’s only one thing left that it could be. “Welcome to the Being Locked in Elena’s House Party where being pissed off about it is actually normal and not a symptom of someone losing their mind.” She glared at me, and I continued, “Let me tell you what I think since you have the sword, and they’re still out of town in search of something. Either Katherine has them at the Lake House searching for the tombstone, or – “

“Is that where it is?”

Looking at Elena, I answered, “Well, I know where I put it, but this is Katherine, so it’s possible she already found the stone and just needed to make her finding it in front of them look legit, or . . . “ Turning back to Caroline, because I didn’t think they were going after the tombstone based on her lack of reaction to that scenario, I continued with, “I’m guessing that Katherine had to at least pretend like she didn’t already know exactly where I took the professor, because they knew Elena didn’t know that, so yesterday morning, they went to the professor’s house and saw what was left of it. They then went to Whitmore, where his office was just as destroyed, but anyone could’ve looked up the online college newspaper after seeing what I’d done to his house and found out that the fire there happened the day after I took the professor, so it was the perfect place for her to stage me having dropped something out of my jacket pocket that said Cincinnati on it, something like a receipt that was absolutely not mine. They drove there overnight, and that’s where they are right now.”

Seeing the same unwitting confirmation I did of how close my guess was in Caroline and Tyler’s body language, Elena’s head turned in my direction again. “Where is he in Cincinnati?”

“Random psychiatric institution, except he actually needs one, unlike me.” This didn’t have to be a bad thing. It’d taken them half their head start just to find the professor. The timing on it might be tight, but there’s a chance that I might actually beat them to where Silas was and stop them if Damon slowed them down or the babbling of a professor, who only said Silas, did, but only if I either went deep diving in the lake for the headstone and asked Imelda to use it in a locator spell, or used the sword to decipher the map, which Caroline and Tyler had so helpfully brought here for me to do. I just had to figure out how to get Caroline to let me do that now, because I was pretty sure that after locking them in here, letting me do anything to further my cause was just about the last thing she wanted.


	67. The Funeral

Elena threw the door open - tears streaming down her face - and ran upstairs to her room. I received a look of ‘What’d you do now?’ from Caroline as she turned to chase after her yelling a worried, “Elena,” and rolled my eyes.

“It’s a funeral. People cry.” I hadn’t actually done anything, or I didn’t think I had. I did go in there with just Elena first, because I really did think Alice would have liked it if we did, and I'd wanted to honor that. Then Elena had asked what I’d said to Alice the night she died, so I gave her fairly detailed account of everything that happened, and now she was upstairs crying about it. I actually thought that was a good thing. 

It was more than a little worrying to me that she’d started out her baby vampire career doing more damage than Klaus probably had in his first 300 to 400 years, maybe longer, and without feeling any remorse about it, hence, me repeatedly shoving what she'd done in her face. If someone didn't hold her to account now, then what kind of a future did it bode for her, in say, even 100 years from now? Because I was fairly certain that with one act, she was responsible for more deaths than Damon, Stefan, Katherine, Finn, and possibly even Rebekah combined. 

Yeah, her crying about killing Alice was definitely a good thing in my book. Now if she could just shift that feeling over to the others who had been killed, there might be some hope for her yet. I went to my guitar and picked it up, but before I could find a place to sit, I heard Tyler say, “I bet you’re just loving this, aren’t you,” and immediately looked back at him. 

With a snap of my fingers to get his attention off of Klaus, and a clear command of “No,” I pointed at him, and when he started to complain about it, I turned away saying, “I think it’s time you make up for mocking the kids in band by learning percussion, don’t you?” 

“What?!” 

I looked back at him over my shoulder. “Apparently, you were quite the high school stereotype before I met you. Certainly made some of those kids’ lives a living hell for the last few years. Maybe it’ll teach you some kind of appreciation for them, and you’ll consider apologizing to them before you graduate.” He looked up the stairs for a non-existent Caroline’s help, so I added, “Or I suppose you could go up there and help Caroline calm Elena down.” With barely any hesitation at all, he begrudgingly started moving in my direction. Walking into the kitchen, I picked up a cylindrical box of table salt off the floor and decided it’d work for our purposes before going back to take a seat on the floor in the spot where I’d waited for Alice. 

He settled across from me and said, “You know whatever problems you’re having with Elena – “

“It isn’t just Elena though, is it? You have all completely started to lose the run of yourselves. Guarantee you’re all doing far worse things now than Klaus was doing at your age.”

“Yeah, maybe, but it’s because he was human.”

“And yet when you were human, you were terrorizing those kids in band.” 

My eyebrow arched, as I waited for him to catch my meaning, and he did a few seconds later. Exhaling a sigh, he still tried, “Is this because of that promise you made Mason, because I don’t need you to look out for me.”

“Well, I know I’ve been pretty hands off on that so far, but if I can get even just this one lesson across to you, then it’s probably the one he would’ve wanted you to have the most, because he said you were a good kid, and I think he wanted you to stay that way, so . . . watch what I do, and then you try it.” I showed him a simple rhythm using the box of salt as a shaker. Then I offered it to him, and he rolled his eyes, but took it. What he did wasn’t a perfect replication of what I’d done, so I had him do it again until it was exactly what I’d shown him. When it was, I showed him another simple rhythm to tap out on top of the box. He got it in general, but his tempo was all over the place. 

“Okay, so at the start, use the shaker. I’ll tell you when to stop, then you wait, and tap out what you just did when I nod to let you know when to come in again. The way it’s supposed to work is you keep the tempo for me, but I think until you get the hang of it, you might have to follow my lead. I’ll keep it slow for now, and we can go a little faster, the better that you do.”

“This is just about the furthest thing I can think of as far as fun goes.”

“And maybe some of those kids in band think the same thing, but they have to do it, because it’s what their parents want . . . Besides, you wouldn’t want to be locked up with a hunter who is in the middle of a psychotic break now would you? This will keep me from having one.”

“Look, I didn’t think you were in the middle of a psychotic break. I think you’re angry your friend died. I would be too, and I get it . . . I mean if I had been the only one in Klaus’s sire line, do you think I don’t know they would’ve still been just fine with killing him . . . Maybe not Caroline, but everyone else? I know just me alone wouldn’t have been enough to make them want to stop, and I would’ve been fine with that if it was true as long as it meant Caroline would be okay, but it doesn’t change that I’m expendable too.”

I sort of felt a little guilty every time I was around him for still being on good terms with his Mom’s murderer, because I suppose that was probably rather insensitive of me, but I really felt it now. I don’t know. Suppose I’d just sort of done that mental gymnastics thing I did to not have to blame Klaus so I didn’t have to cut him out of my life, but it was really at the expense of Tyler, and did that really make me any better than Caroline who'd essentially done the same thing to keep her friends in her life despite everything they’d done? Nope. Not at all. I’d have to ruminate on that a bit. “You ready?”

After huffing out a sigh, he answered, “No . . . now if you showed me how to play that thing? Maybe.”

I looked down at my guitar. “It’s an issue of optics, isn’t it?”

“It is definitely cooler than playing with a box of salt.”

“Percussion. A.K.A. Being the drummer in this little band of two.”

He looked at the salt again. “And chicks dig drummers, right?”

“Well, if you’re any good, it at least says you have rhythm, so I’d say that’s a selling point in and of itself.”

He hesitated, like he wasn’t sure I’d meant that the way he thought because I’d been so dry in my delivery, but a few moments later, he laughed. Focusing on the salt box, like he was going to take it a little more seriously, he added, “All right, then let’s do this thing, so I can impress my girl.”

There’d been a hint of possessiveness to the way he’d said ‘my girl.’ Maybe he’d caught that look that Caroline had given Klaus earlier. He’d been standing beside her, so I hadn’t thought he did. It was more likely that he was still just talking shit to Klaus and didn’t think I knew that’s what he was doing, but I’d let it go for now. “If it’s just not working out, then we’ll swap, and I’ll show you an easy song?” 

He seemed insulted by that, so I guess he didn’t want anyone questioning his sexual prowess, which was kind of the whole reason I’d brought it up. It'd seemed as good a way to motivate him to do this and be good at it as any. Hopefully, it worked. I nodded at the salt box to let him know he could start, and he did his part with the shaker perfectly before giving me a wink and a grin. I rolled my eyes and exhaled an awkward laugh. “And hold.” 

He stopped, and I lightly hit the body of my guitar to keep the beat, so he could get used to it before giving him the cue to start his tapping at the same time that I started playing. We got through a few bars, and I stopped to go over a change in the rhythm with him. I counted him down to where we’d left off, and he actually wasn’t terrible for a guy who had no training. There were a few more starts and stops at transitions, and then we took it again from the top. Even better that time, and he didn’t seem to mind it much. 

On the third run through, I increased the tempo somewhat, and he kept up well enough with that. He was putting a bit of flourish to it. One might even say he was kind of enjoying himself, not that I'd call attention to it when he was still in a phase where he'd deny it and walk off just to prove me wrong. On the fourth attempt, I brought us up to the tempo where the song should be, and halfway through, we were interrupted.

“What are you guys doing?”

Tyler quickly looked back at Caroline. “Hey, Care, come watch this.”

At his enthusiasm, I had to force myself not to grin before saying, “Yeah, if you’re still looking for a drummer, give him a few months with a real drum set and a proper instructor, and he might be all right.”

He quickly looked at me and then back at her to see what she thought, and she gave him an affectionate look. “It could be fun.” If he had a long term goal like being in a band with her, then it might give him something else to fill his time with other than plotting Klaus’s demise, and that is ultimately what she and I both wanted. Him apologizing to those band kids by the end of the school year would really just be a bonus. That’s what I was thinking when her eyes flitted to me and narrowed. “Can I talk to you?”

“That depends on why you want to talk to me.”

Whatever it was, she chickened out. Looking at our set up, she said, “It can wait. Why don’t you show me what you were playing?”

 _West Coast_ by Coconut Records, Jason Schwartzman’s solo-project, but I didn’t particularly feel like explaining who he was to them if they didn’t immediately know, and I didn’t particularly feel like letting her know I still had my phone on me to show her the lyrics if she was thinking of singing with us. “Actually, don’t you have some closure to get?” 

I think she might have argued with me or taken it as me just mocking her, which I kind of was doing, if she hadn’t caught my look at the end that said ‘I’d just wanted some time to myself with my guitar and had to start babysitting Tyler, but now that you’re back, I really need that time alone’ . . . or maybe that’s what it meant to me, and she just translated it to mean ‘please?’ Either way, I think my message had been received, because after a deep sigh, she looked back over her shoulder towards the fancy dining room saying, “We probably should. We’re going to be here for a while anyway, so you’ll have plenty of time to show me later, and maybe I could sing with you guys too.” 

For a guy who hadn’t wanted to start this, Tyler sure did seem a little reluctant to stop now, but if it’s what she wanted, then he’d go in there to support her. As they disappeared, I started to relax and was thinking about what to play next.

“That’s two days in a row now that you’ve kept him at bay.”

I looked over my shoulder in the direction of the other room. “I hardly think anyone should be antagonizing you right now.” 

“Out of respect.”

“I guess . . . I mean it’s not like I’m keeping anything from you that you couldn’t respond to yourself, but I don’t think it’s something you should have to deal with, and it’s better for everyone if you don’t.”

“So it has nothing to do with me being behind enemy lines?” 

I knew what he was referencing. He'd eavesdropped in on that entire conversation between Caroline and Elena last night the same way I had. In fact, he'd only been standing a few feet away from me, but seriously, who else was here to have his back if it wasn't me? “Shut up.”

He made no attempt to keep the humor out of his voice as he said, “And clearly there’s nothing in your way of thinking that says you, yourself, should treat me with respect . . . It makes me wonder.”

“Cut it out.”

“For now . . . Who is Mason?"

"He was his uncle."

"I take it that he was a werewolf."

"Yeah."

"And in the pack you killed?"

"He was dead before I killed them, but yeah."

"You killed him too."

Where was he going with this? "Yeah."

"Was he suffering?"

The way people who were a darker shade of gray jumped to the conclusion that I did things for noble reasons happened as frequently as people who were lighter shades of gray jumped to the conclusion that I had nefarious reasons. I suppose it just proved that I was somewhere in the middle . . . Hm. Elena seemed to have leapfrogged over me from a lighter shade to a darker shade. Maybe that's why she'd started thinking I was naive before she killed Kol or that I was confused the way she'd said last night. 

She hadn't really started to accept how dark what she'd done was until today with the list I'd had her make and Alice's funeral, so I wondered if that'd change now, because one thing the darker shades of grey in my life didn't do was think I was naive or confused. I earned at least some amount of respect from them. Guess it was something else to ponder later.

"Uh, no . . . I mean, Damon had been torturing him, but he was healing. I went in there to save him. Instead, I . . . he was already struggling with being a werewolf, and I went overboard on that thing I do, shattered his world view, ripped his life to shreds, whatever you want to call it, and talked him right into asking me to kill him. He knew Katherine would kill him when she found out he'd lost the moonstone, because she still had Tyler as a back up, and he knew he couldn't bring himself to kill her. He wanted me to promise that I'd look after Tyler, and if Tyler triggered the curse, he wanted me to find him a pack to show him the ropes. He didn't say his pack, which I killed, but a pack, and I think Tyler mostly sees his friends around here as his pack, so that's what I'm going with for now."

"You feel guilty about it."

It felt a lot like he was asking why or would with his next question, so I said, "At a certain point, I wanted to crush him, and it doesn't matter that it was with words, that's what I did."

"With the ultimate goal being to save him from what Damon had in mind?"

"Yeah." I had been ready to let Mason go when I was done.

"Would you claim credit for the sacrifice he chose to make for his nephew?"

"No."

"Then why would you take the blame? Doing so diminishes the choice he made just the same."

"Oh." By blaming myself for Mason's choice, I was actually taking responsibility for something altruistic he'd done for Tyler. It hadn't exactly turned out the way Mason had planned, but that didn't change that he'd died for Tyler. Thinking of it that way actually made this burden I'd been carrying around in the back of my mind start to dissipate. It was exactly what I'd needed to hear.

Taking my silence as a positive sign, Klaus asked, "Would I be right in thinking that you’ve bested Tyler?”

“What?”

“In a fight the two of you must have had, you came out of it victorious . . . Was it at this convention I’ve heard so much about?”

“That was more of a team effort.”

“Another time then?”

Well, I certainly wasn’t going to tell Klaus that I’d fought with Tyler the first time he turned to break his sire bond to Klaus. “Why?”

“No reason.”

I rolled my eyes. Yes, there very much was a reason, and it was absurd. Alphas got their position by besting the previous Alpha, besting another challenger for it, or by inheriting the rank. “He doesn’t think I’m his Alpha.”

“Maybe not in the strictest sense of the word, because you’re clearly not a hybrid, but he does defer to you as his de facto leader.”

“If you were to look through the town records, you’d see that the Lockwoods have always been the mayors of this town, so I’d say they’re natural born Alphas of werewolves or men, and I’ve seen him in action with the football team or in moments of crisis. He has what it takes to be a good leader if he wants to be.”

“But not of you.”

“Absolutely not.” I heard him exhale a quiet chuckle and said, “I’m not a leader or a follower. I’m more of a lone-wolf type, or not even a wolf, more of a tiger.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so.”

“Then I guess it must be true.” I shot a look over my shoulder but was prepared to leave it at that. I was about to start playing when he said, “Of course, tigers are powerful symbols the world over as well, and they are solitary creatures, but a lone wolf rarely survives. I wonder if it matters to one if it’s being led by a tiger or not.”

He clearly had an agenda. I chose to ignore it. “Now, that would make for an interesting animal documentary.” 

“I know that you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, well, if it ends up on the twin’s list and tips it in favor of me staying in this town, I’m blaming you.”

If that hadn’t been where he was going with it, then that was the time for him to say it. Instead, he asked, “What will you play next?”

“I’m not sure yet.” I did prefer the guitar version of _The Funeral_ to the piano version, and I needed to practice it anyway, but _Boulevard of Broken Dreams_ by Green Day seemed a little more appropriate. I might have a few others that would work too. “You don’t mind?”

“That all depends on why you’re playing it.”

“I think you know.” 

It’d be more for Kol than Alice. I needed to give his brother some kind of recognition even if nobody else did. There was a long bout of silence, but eventually, he said, “Then how could I refuse? Play whatever you want.” Guess I’d better get this right then. I decided that I’d start with _The Funeral_ first and see how it sounded, then maybe try _The Trapeze Swinger_ by Iron and Wine, and then the one from Green Day, but absolutely under no circumstances would there be any singing involved.


	68. Skeletons

From _Boulevard of Broken Dreams_ , I played _Mistaken for Strangers_ by the National, because I was mostly thinking that I really didn’t want Kol watching over me, and the chorus of that song said, _You wouldn't want an angel watching over you._ He was pretty damn far from being an angel, but it didn't change that I didn't want him keeping tabs on me from the Other Side. I was fairly certain he had to be pissed at me in a big way, or he should be. Maybe I should start talking to him when we got out of this house. 

After _Mistaken for Strangers_ , I moved on to an acoustic version of _Skeletons_ from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, even though it absolutely wasn’t a sentiment Kol would have at the moment. It's a song I used to listen to when I thought I was going to be in the sacrifice and seemed fitting for a funeral. It was a bit sparse with only a guitar though. It needed something. I had to at least hum the melody of the ‘oohs’ during the chorus and near the end to fill in some of the gaps and flesh it out more.

The first reminder that I wasn’t alone happened when I finished the song. “Oh, Elena, I wouldn’t . . . “

It was soon followed by the outline of a body taking up residence right across from me, but I didn’t acknowledge it. “Hey.”

“Please go away.”

“Eve, if we all have to be here, then can you at least try to be nice?!” 

I shot Caroline a look. Why did she think I said, ‘please?’ With a sigh, I finally looked at Elena. “I don’t want an audience.”

Offering me an awkward smile, she said, “I hate to break it to you, but . . . you kind of already have one.”

“Meh, nobody else is paying attention.”

“They are. You’re really good.”

“Not yet. The piano is my instrument. The guitar is my back up. Playing easy songs helps.” 

To demonstrate my point, I looked down at the guitar. _Landslide_ by Fleetwood Mac wasn’t particularly difficult, but I had to play it at about three quarters speed to get all the way through it without any mistakes because of all the finger picking. I got to almost the first verse when Caroline came closer saying, “Is that – “

Landslide? “Yep.

“My Mom – “

Loves this song, because she found it empowering after her divorce, and used to listen to it all the time? “Uh huh.”

“Is that why you – “

“Yeah.”

“Why would you – “

With a sigh, I stopped to look up at her. “Because I thought you might want to sing it for her as a Christmas present.”

“Well, why didn’t you say anything to me about it?!” 

“Is it a problem because it reminds you of your parent’s divorce?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. That’s not the point. The point is you should have consulted me if – “

“Fine. It works better for me now if I just play it, put it on a tape or something, and send it to her in the mail anyway.”

“No! I want to sing it for her now that you said it.” I fought against a faint smile when I heard Tyler, in the background, wondering aloud if Bonnie put something in her spell that made everyone in this house go nuts. Caroline heard him. I know she did. She almost looked back at him, but eventually threw her eyes to the ceiling before focusing on me to say, “I just need time to prepare. That’s all. How am I supposed to do that if you just suddenly spring it on me?”

“Like you really need time to prepare. It takes you like half an hour to learn a song you’ve never heard in your life and put your own spin on it, but I was pretty sure you already knew this song, and if I didn’t have my part of it up to scratch by Christmas, then I wouldn’t have said anything about it at all.”

Her shoulders dropped. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh, now leave me alone.” Looking at Elena, I added, “And take this one with you.”

After a frustrated sigh, Caroline asked, “How did you even know?”

“Know what?”

“You know what. How did you know how much that song means to her?”

“Uh, I’m on the council with her. Why do you guys – “

“Huh uh, no, stop it right now. I have not put in the time I have with you for you to relegate me to ‘you guys.’ Whatever problems you have with Elena – “

“Are with Elena? Yeah, no, that’s true, but I can be angry with more than one person at a time and for totally different reasons.”

“What did I even do?!”

I understood why she'd had to distance herself from the deaths caused, including Alice's. I also understood her wanting to help the others by finding the sword if she believed Klaus was going to go on a rampage after what'd happened. I'd be able to get past all of that - maybe not today, but soon - because I understood it. I knew that if she didn’t want to lose her friends, it’s what she had to do, and who was I to judge for that? A more difficult thing for me to understand was her prioritizing the sword over checking on me considering she had to know Alice had died here, but I suspected that it'd been because she hadn't wanted to face me, and I hadn't actually been in as bad of a state as she'd been told, so I'd probably be able to move that into the 'soon to be forgiven' column with the other issues soon. What I was having the most difficulty with was her even considering locking me up, and I was still very annoyed that she’d lied to me, because it showed intent to follow through on that particular plan. 

“That’s a good question. What did you do, Caroline?” She took half a step back, and I added, “Yeah, you already know the answer to that one, so why ask it? And Elena told you what I said to her last night when she was upstairs with you earlier, so now you’re picking a fight over a song, because you’ve changed your mind, and that’s how you’ve decided to vent your frustration, but you were absolutely right in what you said.“ 

Crouching down next to Elena in front of me, she quickly said, “But I didn’t mean it. I just say stupid things sometimes, and – “

“Caroline, you saying that was the first honest thing you said to who you thought was me since you came waltzing in through that door yesterday in your own good time.”

She briefly looked panicked before rattling off, “It’s not what you think.”

“Did you or did you not receive the first call from them early yesterday morning, and that is what immediately precipitated Tyler coming over here?”

“I did, but – “

“And did you hear Stefan and Bonnie talking in the background of that single phone call, or were there multiple phone calls, specifically with them, because it was too delicate of a subject around ‘Elena’ given what she’d been through, and it was during those discussions where plans were made in relation to me?” 

She didn’t answer, but I knew I was right by her body language. “And despite everything I’ve said to you about Silas and Bonnie, you bought into the panic of everyone else and were actually looking for the sword from the time that first call was received to the time you got here?” 

I got a slight nod out of her before saying, “So when you did show up, it wasn’t for me . . . It was to find out where Klaus hid the sword after you hit a dead end.” 

No answer, but again, I knew what it should be as her eyes flicked to the side. “And all the while you knew Alice was here . . . and Kol for that matter . . . and believed that I’d had some kind of a psychotic break without having assessed me yourself . . . You got here, saw what I’d done to the place, and tried to make an effort last night - partly for me, but mostly to keep me from trashing Elena’s house - and because of confirmation bias, you were also looking for any and all signs that they were right, so you would’ve found it . . . If you hadn’t seen Elena today, there’s a high probability that you would’ve decided to do what they wanted despite your lapse in judgement last night. All that was, was you feeling a little nostalgic after your story about the werewolf massacre, so you told who you thought was me, that it would be better for me if I left, and even Elena saw that warning for what it was. There is a plan in place on what to do about me, and you’ve been a part of it all along, so yeah, it is exactly what I think.”

“Eve – “

Looking back down at my guitar, I dismissed her saying, “I’m finished. So why don’t you go back over to where you were and think about what you’ve done?”

I heard the most ill-advised snort come from the direction of the twin, and as Caroline’s head snapped in her direction, Elena tried covering her mouth with her hand as she looked away from her, but it didn’t stop what quickly became a full on guffaw. “Stop it! This isn’t funny!”

Elena nodded, like she knew that, but she couldn’t get the words out as she burst out in another fit of laughter. Pretty sure she was just relieved not to have been on the receiving end of it this time, but maybe after the roller coaster of emotions I’d put her through since she’d been here, she just needed to relieve some of that stress somehow. Suppose laughter wasn’t the worst way for her to do it, except that it was at what Caroline thought was her expense. “None of this would be happening if you hadn’t blah, blah, blah . . . “

Elena’s laughter cut out abruptly, and she blah, blah, blah’d Caroline right back, so I took the opportunity to scoot away from them as they bickered back and forth. I made it all the way into the other room, scooted past Klaus, who was sitting on the floor with his back against the end of the couch, went to a spot on the opposite side of the wall from where I’d been sitting, and the bickering continued. It was a testament to how strong he actually was that Klaus was able to be in here with Kol all this time without cracking, but maybe there was just enough going on to entertain him that it was able to take his mind off of it, because he seemed to be highly amused. Settling my guitar into my lap, I asked, “Do you have anything you want to hear?”

“When you’re already providing one of the best performances I’ve seen? Carry on however you see fit.” 

Looking over my shoulder in the direction, I grumbled, “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“And yet you have consistently played all the right notes to break them down in almost no time at all.”

“I’m aware.”

“It is supremely satisfying whether that was your intention or not.”

“I’d imagine it’s a bit like watching a mongoose taking on a bag full of cobras.”

Exhaling a silent laugh, he responded, “Well, if I am ever in need of help with psychologically terrorizing my enemies, I know who to call.” Looking at my guitar, he added, “The last one you played before you were interrupted . . . I liked its simplicity. There was something quite haunting about it . . . Do you have any more like that in your repertoire?” I was sure I did. I just had to think of them, and if I couldn’t, I’d just have to play one of my own. Nobody ever heard those, but I doubted he’d know the difference, and if funerals were really supposed to be more for the living than the dead and that is what he wanted, then I’d find a way to accommodate him.


	69. She-Ra

Holy hell, this thing was heavy. No wonder those supernatural hunters had enhanced strength. There’s no way anyone could fight with one of these things and hope to win if they didn’t have it. Still. I had to do this once in my life, so I summoned the strength to lift the sword high over my head with one hand. Hadn’t exactly meant to stab it through the ceiling, but I suppose I should have known it would considering the ceilings in here weren’t that high. As bits of plaster rained down on top of me, I gave an evil little laugh before yelling, “For the honor of Grayskull!” and that is how I woke the house up on the last morning of my captivity. 

In next to no time at all, three sets of eyes that hadn’t been there a moment ago appeared. One set came from upstairs and were wide, like they’d expected to find some kind of fight going on down here. Another set had been worried and now horror was making its way into them over the sword in the ceiling, and the third set of eyes saw my pose, realized what I’d said, understood what I’d been attempting to do and found it hilarious. Laughing, Tyler stepped forward saying, “Oh man, why didn’t I think of that? Here, She-ra. Let me try.”

“Tyler!” 

Getting fed up with everything going on inside this house, Tyler chaffed under Caroline’s rebuke and tossed, “Lighten up. It’s just a bit of fun,” at her over his shoulder as he stepped forward.

Zooming in front of him, she said, “Look, I know we’re all under a lot of stress, but that doesn’t mean we can just go around destroying Elena’s house or the sword that we need to decipher that map.”

Gripping the hilt with both hands, I tugged down on the sword to get it out of the ceiling, and it swung past her shoulder on its way to the ground before making a nice nick in the floor. Her eyes widened when they followed it, first out of fear over how close that’d unintentionally been to her, and second because she finally saw that I’d spent most of my early morning letting the sword trail behind me to mark up the entire wooden floor. “Eve Gilbert, what have you done?!” Her eyes immediately went to the girl on the steps. “Oh, Elena, I’m so sorry.”

Turning away from them and letting the sword trail behind me again, I murmured, “Hm . . . floor . . . lives that can’t be replaced . . . floor . . . lives that can’t be replaced . . . guess we know which one elicits more of a response.”

Speeding in front of me, Caroline pointed her finger in my face yelling, “You are going to fix all of this damage as soon as we get out of here, and don’t pretend you don’t have any money. Bonnie said – “

“Or what?”

She took half a step back in confusion at my menacing tone. “What?”

“I am going to fix this damage, or what?”

Stepping closer again, Caroline opened her mouth to respond, and Elena came rushing between us. “Or nothing. It’s fine. She’s just venting, and I’d rather she did it on the things around here than the people. Besides, she’s right. The floor can be replaced. What I did can’t be undone, and whether I want to admit it or not, there might have been a girl out there somewhere, like us, who went to sleep next to a Stefan or a Damon or a Tyler and who woke up to find him dead in the morning . . . It isn’t just lives of the vampires that were lost. It’s the lives of the people around them that were impacted, and I don’t know if Silas is really still alive, or if he’s just a guy who lived and died a long time ago . . . I thought he was alive for a while, and I don’t know what made me change my mind. Maybe I just convinced myself that what was happening now was the more immediate danger, but what if he is really out there waiting to be released, and looking for that cure is actually what gets the people I care about killed? I don’t think I could live with myself if that happened.”

“Aww, Elena. That’s not going to happen.”

“It could, and maybe it’s what I deserve. The truth is, I’m disgusted with myself, and I’d rather learn the lesson she’s trying to teach me now before it’s too late, but who knows? It might already be too late, and there’s nothing I can do about it . . . The same way she can’t do anything about it, and that is why Damon did what he did, because he knew that however much I hate being kept out of this fight, she hates it just as much, and he wanted me to know how that felt . . . and you being here . . . and Tyler . . . I know you both hate it too . . . so however angry you are with her for that and for everything she’s done, now you know just a little of how she feels.”

Shaking her head at Caroline in disappointment, she added, “Can’t you see? We’re her villains the same way we feel like she’s ours, but if we’d just listen to what she’s saying, we’d know that despite that, she’s trying to make us better people, and what have we actually done for her other than say, ‘Sorry we killed your friends and ruined the lives of a bunch of strangers. Don’t be mad at us, because we’re more important, so that makes it okay, and you are just as expendable as your friends even though we pretend like you’re not. We'll listen to you if we feel like it, but not if it's something we don't want to hear, and if this works out the way we want, we’ll punish you for going against us, but if it works out the way you say it will, then we will still expect you to fix it, because you’re the one who has done the research on it.’ Which one sounds more like an actual villain to you?”

Looking at the back of her head, I relaxed, and Caroline awkwardly said, “Come on, Elena, that’s not what – “

“It isn’t easy to admit, but I’ve been confronted with it non-stop for the last couple of days, and that is absolutely how we are behaving. We need to admit it now before we get worse . . . I mean, do you honestly think that even Klaus has killed this many vampires? Okay, he probably has, but he’s had 1000 years to do it, and he’s certainly acted better than any of us even though his brother died. Yes, he killed Jenna, and yes, he killed Tyler’s Mom, but unlike us, he’s lost someone he’s loved for 1000 years, which has to be 50 times worse for him, and let’s not forget about Finn.”

“What are you saying?”

Looking past Caroline to Klaus, who was watching the entire interaction from his place against the door frame, Elena warily shook her head and said, “I’ve been locked up with him for two and a half days, and . . . maybe I should’ve listened when I was told that a peaceful resolution was possible instead of assuming that it wasn’t, but now it’s too late for that, and because it is . . . I don’t know. A blank slate worked with Rebekah and Eve, so maybe – “

Mocking her somewhat, Klaus suggested, “You simply want to start anew, like it never happened?“

Stepping forward, Tyler objected, “What? No!”

Placing her hands on Tyler’s chest, Caroline held him back saying, “I know, okay. I know . . . but I need you to trust me.” He took a little longer to go from 100 back down to 0 than he’d taken to go from 0 to 100, but after a few moments, he relaxed before nodding to let her know he wouldn’t go on the attack against Klaus just then. Looking back at Klaus, she studied him before deciding that from what she’d seen herself, Elena was right. “Would you do that? Would you really put everything aside and call us even?” 

His eyes narrowed as he took in all of their faces, and finally he said, “I suppose that would depend on who’s asking.”

“Me . . . I’m not asking you to forgive and forget, but we can’t continue going back and forth with you killing someone important to us and us killing someone important to you. One of us has to be the bigger person. Show me that it can be you.” 

With a little smirk, he slowly moved from one side of the door frame to the other, eyebrow arched, like he was about to be a bit of a devil, and finally he said, “And Eve . . . How would you ask?” 

In about a second, all eyes were on me. “I wouldn’t.” 

There was a collective groan from both Elena and Caroline, and Klaus asked, “Why not?” like he wanted them to hear the answer.

“If the conditions were right for it, I’d simply tell you that we had a blank slate and anything going forward was up to you.” 

Tipping his head forward, he teasingly said, “A bold approach.”

“Well, by asking, I’d be handing the power over the decision for us to be even to you.”

“And you wouldn’t concede that power?” 

I shook my head. “A blank slate is not the same as saying there’s a balance of power.”

He considered it before saying, “By making the decision unilaterally for a blank slate, you retain power over the other party’s actions, because it seems as though you’re doing them a favor, which makes them feel indebted to you and more likely to honor the agreement to repay that debt.”

I nodded before saying, “Particularly if they know that breaking that agreement will have negative consequences.” 

He looked from Elena to Tyler and finally Caroline, where he lingered, before saying, “If I were to accept your proposal, I have some conditions,” because he knew that while it may not matter to them as long as they got the result they wanted, to someone who valued the subtlety of power plays, like him, they’d made a mistake, and he was going to capitalize on that. “Obviously, it has no bearing on me honoring my wager.” 

He was looking at Elena, and Caroline looked back at her too. Elena quickly nodded to let her know it was okay, because I think she finally got that with it, she actually had around a 66% chance of survival given the odds. In addition to her not being killed if Silas was real, she wouldn’t be killed if they never found the cure and Silas. It’d just be an ongoing wager if nothing else, and if it meant protecting her friends, she’d risk the 33% chance of dying. Caroline turned her attention back to Klaus, and he added, “And if any of you go after me or my family again, I can assure you that my retribution will be swift and merciless. This town and its inhabitants will be wiped from the face of the Earth.” Caroline was a bit hesitant with her nod to that one because of how serious he’d been when he said it, but she did in the end, and he quickly added, “That includes Eve . . . No one is to harm her or imprison her like this again.”

Caroline nodded, but Elena quickly said, “Wait. What?“

Turning away from us, like a king who was done attending court, he said a little louder, “It’s non-negotiable.”

“No, I’m not trying to negotiate, but – “

“I know what you meant,” came floating out of the other room, and I snorted. 

“This isn’t funny. You’re not his family. You’re mine.”

Exhaling another laugh, I said, “Well, he did say you abdicated all responsibility for me the other night.”

“What? No. He can’t just swoop in and steal you.”

“You’re a lunatic. Nobody is stealing me. I’m not a child. I’m a young adult.”

“With some child-like qualities.” 

I quickly looked at Caroline. “Maybe when I got here, but now? In what way?”

“Eve, look at what you did to the floor! It looks like a giant doodle.”

“Made with a fucking sword.” 

“You woke us up pretending to be She-Ra.”

Ah, there was actually another, more deep-seeded, reason for her pettiness now that her anger had subsided. “You want to give it a go, don’t you? I mean with the hair you’re actually more suited to it. Bet you always wished you were her growing up, huh? No judgement here if you want to try it.” 

Her eyes flicked to the sword and then the stairs before she reached for the hilt and quickly said, “Okay, maybe there might be room for me to do it over there.”

“Hey! What about me?” Taking the sword with her towards the stairs, Caroline said, “Wait your turn, He-Man. She-Ra was always way better anyway.”


	70. Mind Games

Cautiously approaching me as I played the guitar, Elena crouched down in front of me saying, “Hey.”

“Hm?”

“I’ve been thinking about it . . . When Katherine told Caroline that she was going to make it all up to you . . . what did she mean?” My eyes flicked to her, and that was my only response, but she knew the answer without me having to say it. “She meant for everything we’ve done, didn’t she?” My eyebrow arched, and she took a deep breath before saying, “Why would she do that for you? Why has she done anything she’s done for you?”

“How many times do I have to give you the same answer?”

Bowing her head, Elena nodded before saying, “What do you think she’s going to do?”

“Who knows? It’s Katherine. It could be anything from murder to sending vampires to keep me here and occupied a little longer if what she needs is more time.”

“How would that make anything up to you?”

“She knows it’s an outlet I could probably use right about now.”

“Still?”

“Have I really stopped being aggressive since the other night?”

Taking a seat across from me, she answered, “You’re not being aggressive now.”

“Yeah, Caroline bringing my guitar was a smarter move than I think she thought she was making at the time.”

“You seem angrier with her than you are with me. Why is that?”

“The mere fact that I can still feel anger towards her means it’s somewhere in the realm of normal anger. With you . . . The initial ice cold/white hot rage I did feel would have consumed me if I hadn’t gotten rid of it, and what it’s left in its wake is nothing. If the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference, then that is where I am today. If you were on fire, I’d put you out, but only because, I don’t have to like someone to help them, and I’m not going to let who you are destroy who I am.”

“So not because I mean anything to you.” Basically. My answer was a shrug, and she asked, “Why isn’t it the same for Caroline? She was your closest friend, and she betrayed you too.”

“Ah, but she didn’t, did she?” 

Elena considered it before saying, “Because you stopped her before she could. That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have.”

“It doesn’t mean she would have either, but now it’s a case of ‘I guess we’ll never know for sure one way or the other,’ and I can live with that.” 

“Under the umbrella of self-delusion?”

“To an extent. It’s not like I trust her the way I did, but there’s enough trust left to count as a thread.”

“And that’s enough for you to forgive her?”

“Not yet, but she didn’t do irreparable damage . . . She’s just shut out how much she really liked Alice to prevent the cognitive dissonance of her friends being responsible for it, and I lost control of the narrative she was given outside the house about me, but she should’ve known better. It’s like how she should’ve known I didn’t intentionally let her father get mauled by Tyler, but she didn’t until her father told her that, except this time it’s because, just like with Alice, it will always be you guys first, which is normal, since she’s known you guys her whole life, so I understand, but I am still a little annoyed by it. She has work to do, and so do I when it comes to being receptive to her attempts. It’s going to take a lot of time, but it won’t be impossible for either of us, I don’t think.”

Elena briefly bowed her head with a nod before her eyes flicked to the room where Klaus was. “And the time you stopped Tyler from killing her Dad. Is that when . . . “

So, she had heard that yesterday - had probably been spying on us when Caroline and Tyler went in to say their goodbyes to Alice, which Klaus had surely known. Vampires and their damn hearing. They could turn it off and on when they wanted, which was a nuisance. “That is a load of rubbish.”

“Neither one of you have ever talked about what happened.“ 

I rolled my eyes. “There’s no reason to talk about it.”

Looking over her shoulder to make sure Caroline and Tyler couldn’t hear, she leaned forward and almost inaudibly whispered, “He hasn’t questioned you keeping them here once since he’s been here . . . I think there might be something to it.”

“There isn’t.”

“But what if there is?”

Obviously my hushed voice wasn’t convincing enough. Raising the volume to a normal speaking voice, I said with a bit more finality, “There isn’t.”

“But if there was, wouldn’t that mean that you had a responsibility to him?”

“Are you trying to make me stake you again?”

“No . . . just giving you something to think about.”

“And manipulating me in the process.”

With a slight shrug she offered a small smile saying, “If it works.” I rolled my eyes and went back to focusing on my guitar. Finally using her normal speaking voice, she added, “But about Katherine . . . when you say murder . . . you mean someone she’s with right now, don’t you?”

Without looking at her, I muttered, “I fail to see how her murdering some random person would be making anything up to me.”

“But you don’t really think – “

Cutting her off, I said, “The first thing I thought of when I heard what she told Caroline was what she said to me the last time I saw her in person.”

“What was that?” 

“’I have my rules. You have yours. We may bend them from time to time, but we have them for a reason. Self-preservation above all else. You leave that with me’ . . . It was in reference to Alec. All we knew about him at the time was that he was a hunter that Imelda called to deal with this town.”

“So, she is going to kill them, because she knows it’d break one of your rules if you did it?” 

I flicked a look at her and said, “Like I said, it’s Katherine, so who knows?” 

“That wouldn’t have been the first thing you thought if you didn’t think that’s what she was going to do. What if she’s already done it?!”

“If that is what she’s thinking, she won’t do it until after she gets what she wants.”

“So, she uses them to get the cure, and then she just murders all of them?!”

“Not necessarily all of them. She has a soft spot for Stefan.”

“But Bonnie and Jeremy?!”

“Mm . . . I wouldn’t necessarily think it’d be Bonnie. If what she’s ultimately after is scoring brownie points with Klaus, then I could see her thinking that killing the brother of the girl responsible for killing Klaus’s brother might tip the balance in her favor. That being Jeremy and what he means to you would really just be a bonus for her.”

“Eve, why haven’t you said anything about it until now?!”

“Because I was really hoping to avoid this kind of reaction with the screeching and the yelling when we had so much time left here?”

“We need to warn them – “

“We can’t. You couldn’t let anyone do it if they tried, and if we tied you down and did it, then there’s no way of knowing – “

“I don’t care what happens to me! You can’t let her kill Jeremy. You can’t!”

“Well, if I get to where they’re going before they do, then I won’t. I hardly think that letting her kill him would really be any different than me doing it myself, so her claiming that she’s doing it for me - ”

“Is really just a way for her to do what she wants to do anyway, place the blame on you, and still make you feel like you owe her in some twisted way.”

That was way more likely than Katherine actually wanting to make them suffer on my account the way I’d originally thought when I was feeling extremely vulnerable. It was also very astute of Elena, almost surprisingly so. “Yeah . . . pretty much.”

“So if you don’t get there before they do?”

“Then she’ll have already gotten what she wants, and there’s nothing I can do to change the past at that point.”

“You could tell them she’s with them without letting me know.”

“And what would that achieve? They kill Katherine or lock her up the way they did me, and then they still get there without her? That cure needs to be as far away from them as possible, and if it’s with her, then it will be. At least I know she won’t use it if she wants it to trade for her freedom, so it’ll still be there to make the immortal witch mortal before I kill him.”

Looking down in thought, she said, “So, then I guess the only real solution is to make sure we get there first so she can’t kill Jeremy, and you can have the cure for Silas. Where is that tombstone?”

“In the middle of the lake.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I took a row boat out there the first night we were there and just chucked it overboard. It was the closest thing I had to an ocean at my disposal, so I improvised.”

“But you know how to find it again, right? The general area where it might be. If we looked for it as soon as we get out of here – “

“You really expect to find a very specific rock in the middle of a rather large lake, tonight, when it’s dark?”

“Well, we can’t wait until morning. It might be too late by then. What if they’re already – “

Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I checked my most recent text messages from Imelda and said, “Well, as of last night, they were still in Cincinnati probably listening to the bumbling professor try to point out where they need to go on a map, and he must’ve pointed them back to the lake house, because that’s where they were as of about an hour ago, so – “

“How do you know that?”

“I can’t track their phones, since they’ve all left them behind, but I figured that if Damon knew not to wait around for Katherine to show up because she’d inevitably screw him over, then he’d be following them, so I asked Imelda to track him with a locator spell every so often and give me updates.”

“Imelda’s the one who locked Caroline and Tyler into the house, isn’t she?”

“Well, you hardly think I suddenly picked up witchcraft do you?”

“So if they’re at the lake house, then it must be for the tombstone, right?”

“Why would the guy who has already been to wherever Silas is need that? Maybe he’s made them think that he needs the tombstone to take them back there, but Professor Snake is a snake after all, so if he needs that from them, it isn’t for that. It’s for something else, and it is stalling them in their search.”

“So, there’s still time.” Looking over her shoulder to where Caroline and Tyler were doing a poor job of hiding that they were listening in on our conversation now, she added, “We just need to decipher that map.” When she looked back at me, she added, “We could do that a lot faster if you would help us.”

“Which is the real reason you’re over here right now, because you already worked most of that out. Bravo on the performance by the way.”

Her expression took on an uneasy look for having been caught before she said, “Not about where they are or where the tombstone is . . . just the Katherine part. I know she hates me, so killing people I love and saying she was doing it for you is something she would do to hurt me and drive more of a wedge between you and me. The – “

“Did a pretty good job of doing that yourself.”

She carried on as if it’d barely been a blip on her radar by saying, “thing I didn’t consider was her thinking she might get something out of it with Klaus, but you’re probably right. That’s really just made me more sure that she is planning to kill my brother . . . I need your help to keep that from happening.”

Hm. Something definitely felt off. “If they’re not far from here, and they are stalling out on their search, then why not just wait until tonight when you get out of here and expose Katherine as a fraud? That would keep her from killing Jeremy too, wouldn’t it?”

“But what if they’ve moved on by tonight? Do you really want to wait until they do before trying to decipher the map to find out where they’re going? Damon might be following them, but you’ll still be behind if you don’t get to where they’re going until after he does, or what if wherever Silas is has stayed hidden, because there’s something that prevents witches from finding it, and Imelda is no longer able to track Damon when they get there?”

She made valid points, but I still wasn’t clear on why she was making them if Jeremy was her only concern, because again, the odds were that we’d be out of here before they left the lake house if they were seriously there to look for that stone. “Katherine?”

Confusion, and then disgust flickered across her face. “I thought we already settled this. Why would you say that?”

“Aside from it being the biggest insult I can think of calling the real Elena? You’re playing mind games and being as duplicitous as she would be with the same kind of sinister vibe. I just can’t figure out why. I mean, it’s obvious to me that the likelihood of Jeremy being in danger by tonight is actually pretty low, but you’re still using that to try and push me into helping you decipher that map. Just this morning, you were saying that you wanted to learn a lesson before it’s too late, and while that may have been a ploy to broker a truce and does mean you have no intention of trying to cure Klaus now, I’d hope you’re smart enough after all of this not to still want to look for that cure for yourself. So, what is it that you’re really after on this, the last day we’re all meant to be here?”

Her shoulders fell, and she sighed. “It wasn’t a ploy. I meant it, and I am worried about Jeremy – “

“But?”

Another sigh, and she finally said, “But I have to know.”

“Know what?”

“If he’s really out there . . . I have to know if you were right. Don’t you?”

“I don’t particularly enjoy being proved right on things like this. It’s a hollow victory. I’d rather be believed all along.”

“By ‘on things like this,’ you mean when we were all trying to kill Klaus, don’t you?” I shrugged, like ‘obviously,’ and she said, “Well, I need to know. I – “

Why was she pushing this narrative of needing to be proved wrong so hard. Either I’d really broken her, or there was something really wrong with her. She was really creeping me out right now. She had been for a little while, and I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Quickly scrambling to my feet, I muttered, “What the actual hell?” as I slowly started backing away from her.

Looking up at me, she asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Ugh . . . get out of my fucking head!” The next thing I knew I was sitting up with a start from my spot on the floor. Eyes darting from one face to another. Caroline, Tyler, Elena . . . all of them seemed totally engrossed in whatever they were either tidying, listening to on the stereo, or reading from the looks of it. My eyes narrowed as I moved my guitar out of my lap and got up. Looks like I needed a top up on vervain. 

Drinking water out of the tap was a bit of a bitch since I’d broken all the glasses, including any plastic ones I’d found. A wooden spoon probably would have provided me with even less water than drinking out of my hands. Cupping the water into my hand froze it before I got any, but that’s what I’d been going with the last couple of days. I guess a hand-sized ice cube of the stuff just didn’t give me enough vervain to last long, particularly when the concentrations I was dealing with from the town’s water supply were so much smaller than what I was used to using at home, and I wasn’t eating my ice cubes anywhere close to as often as I should with everything going on in this house. 

It was just one more day, wasn’t it? Half a day at this point. Did I really need my vervain dart? Going to my bloody clothes from the other night, I searched through the pockets until I found the dart, went to the kitchen, tipped my head back, and cracked the dart in half above my mouth. It instantly froze on my tongue, but I just stood there, thought of Damon, and waited for it to melt the way I did my vervain drops at home before going to find the culprit. 

Stalking from the kitchen into the fancy living room, I saw Klaus sitting on the couch looking just as innocent as the others, but I knew better. Flopping down on the couch next to him, I purposely encroached on his space, since he’d encroached on mine, and stared at him from a short enough distance from the side of his face to make it uncomfortable for anyone, not that he’d ever acknowledge that. Finally, I said, “Hi.” He barely glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, and I caught the faint hint of a smile he was fighting, so I asked, “Got anything you want to talk to me about on this, the last day we’re all meant to be here?” That smile grew just a little more, and yeah, that’s what I thought. “You seriously overstepped your bounds, and that is not okay. If you want to know something, just ask me.”

I backed away from him, and he finally looked at me to ask, “And you’ll tell me, will you?”

“I may, or I may not, but that’s just the chance you take when interacting with people. I won’t lie to you though.”

“What happened when you kept Tyler from killing Caroline’s father?“

“That’s really when I should have known something wasn’t right, but I blamed it on vampire hearing.”

“You’re not going to answer that one?”

“He and I have an unspoken agreement not to talk about it, and I don’t want to betray that.”

“I take it that it was while he was still sired to me, and that is why you don’t want to talk about it. I seem to remember my date for the ball having just arrived back into town after tending to her father, and my hybrid was nowhere to be found, so what you mean is that you don’t want to betray him.”

And if I didn’t tell Klaus, then I was betraying him? That seemed to be what he was implying. “Why is this so important to you?”

“Since not answering seems to be an option, I’ll just say that I have my reasons . . . Tell me what happened.”

“You tell me something first.” 

His brow rose briefly, and I took that as an invitation to proceed, although it was most likely a ‘You’re being a pain right now and have the audacity to ask anything of me?’ kind of look. “Does it have anything to do with Caroline? Because if he were to suddenly start doing what another female wanted, I could see that being a problem for her.”

Regarding me, his eyes narrowed before he slowly grinned, “Truthfully, no . . . although I could see that being a reason why you might be so resistant to the idea.”

“She would hate it. She’s always felt second best to Bonnie as Elena’s best friend, second to Elena as Bonnie’s best friend, second to every boy she’s liked who liked Elena first, and Tyler puts her first.”

“For now.”

“Do you really want to know what I think?” 

“I’d rather you stop trying to distract me and tell me what happened when he mauled her father.”

“You are like a wolf with a bone. Fine. What do you know about her Dad?” He rolled his eyes for answering with a question, and rather than frustrate him more, I said, “He tortured Caroline when he found out she’d turned. He tied her up, took her daylight ring, kept waving a blood bag in front of her face, and anytime she started to respond to it, he’d pull the blinds and let the sun burn her, which only made her need to feed more. He was trying to train her not to feed on blood, and he was sure that she could do it, because he has taught himself how to not be compelled.“

I could just tell him what he wanted to know, but I think he liked working out mysteries as much as I did. “However ridiculous that notion is, his way of thinking in terms of mind over matter and his knowledge of how to achieve that to some extent is how Tyler was able to break the sire bond. He was helping him do that when he was attacked.” I nodded, and he asked, “What part did you play?”

“Security.”

“Didn’t the man lose an arm?”

Nice snark. He was annoyed that all of that had gone on without him knowing just like I knew he would be. “Tyler was struggling to change, so her Dad picked up an axe and said he was going to cut off his head because after you had Tyler bite her, it made Tyler a threat to his daughter unless he broke the sire bond. I told him to go, and he waited until after I turned my back to try and hit me in the head with a brick, but Tyler told me to look out, so I dropped to the ground. Her Dad missed, but then I guess he decided to use me to appeal to Tyler’s better nature. I wound up with a broken collar bone, a concussion, and a cracked rib, because – “

“He was human, and you didn’t allow yourself to fight back.” His annoyance seemed to have dissipated. I nodded, and he said, “Tyler changed to protect you.” 

“Yeah, but I couldn’t let him kill Caroline’s Dad, and that’s where I’m leaving it.” 

“Because he submitted, and it was noticeable?”

“Well, he didn’t piss on the floor or anything.” 

I guess that one caught him off guard, because he laughed rather suddenly, and it took him a good few seconds to get it under control before he looked over his shoulder in the direction of the other room to see if he’d been heard. When he looked back at me, the only way he could appear to keep from doing it again was by not saying anything and attempting to give me a look that said, ‘Well?’ like I should explain, but he didn’t care what I said. Anything would do. “He has his reasons not to want to talk about it, and I don’t want to talk about it, because it makes me feel bad.” 

Almost keeping the humor out of his voice, he asked, “Why?”

“Because I have a bit of a soft spot when it comes to animals.”

His eyebrow arched in amusement. “I can assure you he was not an actual animal, so your guilt is misplaced.” I crossed my arms over my chest in disagreement, and he said, “If he accepts you as his leader, it’s an opportunity.” I wasn’t just going to start bossing Tyler around because Klaus thought I should. “Is your reticence really about Caroline?”

“Some. It’s also just not in my nature.”

“That isn’t what I’ve seen.” I glanced up at him over my shoulder, and he said, “There are as many opinions on the characteristics a good leader has as there are people who claim to know about the subject, but you have what it takes to be one. The one thing you lack is influence. Your subtle attempts weren’t working . . . you’ve been anything but subtle the last few days, and it’s yielding results with your main rival, but that path would lead to a continuance of how things are at present with you as a sometimes advisor without a final say, because all of your peers are ultimately more loyal to her – all of them bar one. If you want to lead them away from the incompetent choices they make, then your way to gain influence isn’t going to be with Elena or even Caroline. It’s Tyler. It’s in his nature to either follow or lead, and you’ve shown him why he should follow you. It’s also in his nature to be loyal. It would mean that there is at least one person you know who will do what you say and who could convince the others to follow since he possesses leadership qualities himself and is more of an insider than you will ever be . . . It’s an opportunity.”

I suppose I wasn’t particularly upset with Tyler. Aside from him helping Caroline look for that sword, he’d actually been all right, and if you looked at it from a strategic standpoint, Klaus might be on to something. It was really just another lesson in politics but with Tyler as my ally in my peer group the way Damon was my ally with the adults on the Council. “Maybe.” The smug look on his face earned him a slight glare. “You didn’t happen to know Machiavelli did you?”

“Actually . . . “ 

My eyes briefly widened in surprise. I was pretty sure that Machiavelli wrote _Il Principe_ , the book that put him on the map, in the early 1500s, and Klaus was definitely in England in 1492, because that’s when Katherine was turned. He probably had at least a couple of bad decades after losing her, but if he heard of changes going down in Italy, I could see him moving from court to court to see how he could capitalize on it. When my Mom had me study _The Divine Comedy_ , I remember seeing Botticelli’s map of Hell and that it was commissioned by one of the Medici family members, and I remember looking into who they were and getting wrapped up in it, because they had a fascinating family history that spanned several centuries. “ _Il Principe_ was written not long after the Medici’s took back Florence the first time they were exiled, wasn’t it?” 

Settling back, he studied me before saying, “You could simply ask how I met him, or am I meant to extend trust to you that you do not return with me?”

I suppose he made a fair point. I did seem to be fact checking to see if it was possible for him to have met Machiavelli. “Sorry. Personality defect.”

He smiled briefly before saying, “I wouldn’t call it a defect . . . And if you’re interested in history – “

“That might be an understatement.“ 

“Then, I’ll answer any questions you have – “ I opened my mouth to ask a question, and he added, “After the cure has been obtained.” Oh. I suppose focusing on that did take precedent right now. I nodded in agreement. “Did you really throw the tombstone in the lake?”

“Yes.”

“Are the others there now?”

Good question. That might’ve just been a dream scenario. Grabbing my phone out of my pocket, I checked to see if I’d had any messages. “I don’t know. The last message I got was last night, and they were still in Cincinnati.”

“So was that something else to add to your wish list along with a plague of vampires descending on this house tonight, or do you really think that’s where they’re going next?”

I smiled briefly at his teasing me before answering, “I guess he was carrying it around with him everywhere, so he must have had it for a reason.” 

“You could decipher the map . . . for all the reasons stated.”

“They were valid reasons.“

“And this spell that your One-Eyed Witch placed on the house . . . It wasn’t just specific to Caroline and Tyler, was it?”

Now we were finally getting closer to why he’d gone dream hopping while I was napping. A smile slowly spread across my face but that was my only answer, and he said, “So just how much control did you take back?” 

“I could let them out now if I wanted.” 

With a smirk, he said, “You can be quite diabolical when you want to be, Little Ghost.” I shrugged in response, and he said, “So you can see why – “

“You should never do something like that again? Why, yes - yes, I can. I want your word that you won’t.” 

I got nothing from him. Absolutely nothing, and finally he blinked before sitting back against the couch with a guarded expression. “And how exactly does the demand of an apology work if the demand of a truce gives you power, however subtle, over the other party?”

I found it curious that he’d think an apology was what I’d meant. Did it mean that he knew one was warranted? That was promising. “An apology is never demanded. It’s freely given and not wanted unless it’s genuine. And depending on the transgression, it may or may not be only a first step.” He glanced at me, and I added, “All I want is an acknowledgement that you won’t do it again, and that is enough for me to know that you recognize that it was a violation of trust and that what I think and / or feel about that means something to you.”

His eyes flicked to my forehead before he looked at me to say. “So many rules of engagement going on up there . . . It must be truly exhausting.”

“As if you don’t know yourself . . . At least with the way my mind works, it means that I understand that you did it because doubt managed to worm it’s way into your mind given the day that’s in it, and you don’t want to be left behind. That means something to me, or I’d be angrier about it than I am.”

“And to be left behind means what to you in this context?”

It had been a set of words loaded with multiple meanings. This house. Mystic Falls. For a guy, who feared abandonment deep down, with just himself. He had included me in that bargain of his this morning, so now there was no need for me to leave to keep from being locked up by anyone, and he had been pushing this Tyler narrative to give me an ally in the people my own age and had hinted twice that it was my responsibility to stay for Tyler, so I suspected that might be his real reason for doing it, and yet he was incapable of coming right out and asking me to stay himself. Probably best not to touch on that one right now. “I have no intention of leaving you in this house for starters. We were locked in here together, and we’ll leave together.” Not sure how many people had ever said something like that to him outside his family, but it couldn’t have been many, because his carefully crafted walls dropped a bit, and a calmness, not of the dangerous kind, is what I saw there, so I guess he believed me, and it meant something to him. 

“And I don’t know what the future holds, so anything is possible, a short hunting trip to put this to rest once and for all, or an extended one if things don’t work out the way I want, but either way, I think it would be better for you and the world if you were to stay here in town, because the last thing either needs is you losing your agency and being controlled by anyone, let alone someone with bad intentions.” So I might leave, but it sounded like I might be coming back once the job was done if it was a trip, and I didn’t want him coming with me for a logical reason, but also because I was trying to look out for him, not for any nefarious reasons. 

A moment later, those walls were back up a bit, but the calmness around him remained, and he seemed to want to prepare me for my trip. “How will you prevent yourself from being mind-controlled if you win our wager and Silas does exist? I hardly think the world needs that either.”

“I think I’ll have some heavy reading to do before I get wherever I’m going.”

“You’d be slowing yourself down.”

“I know. I also know that not preparing for something new is a good way to get yourself killed.”

“A fool’s errand.” I nodded, and he said, “So if you can’t find something to protect yourself from his powers before they get there, then why not let the fools wake the sleeping dragon, and while his focus is on them, you can steal the treasure to use against him.” 

“That, and in order to kill him, I need his cage to be opened.”

“So rather than preventing anyone from finding him at all, you’ve just decided to kill him.”

Any one of the people on their way to Silas now could tell someone else his location, and Katherine was among them. She could always just come back another time if I stopped her now or send one of her admirers or simply use the information to buy someone else off for whatever scheme she had going. Stefan wouldn’t stop in his attempts either even if Elena said she didn’t want the cure for herself, because getting her the cure was his new obsession. Rumors in the supernatural world always ran rampant, so someone somewhere would find out somehow that the rock Silas had been hidden under was being kicked, and he, that tombstone, and even the cure were probably all powerful magical items that living, more unscrupulous witches might want. Maybe I should’ve considered that all along, but I hadn’t, and now that I’d been forced to do it, I think I had to admit that my thinking on it before had been a little short-sighted. It wasn’t too late for me to rectify that though. “Someone I know once said ‘nothing is impossible to find as long as it exists,’ so the only way to know for sure that he won’t be a problem in the future, no matter how near or distant that future may be, is to destroy him now when I have him in my sights.”

“I hardly think you’re taking it the way that I meant it.”

Swap out his intended meaning of the inanimate cure and replace it with Silas, and it worked for me. “And yet you can’t argue with it, can you?”

Giving me an amused look that said he thought I was being rather impertinent, he said, “All of this presupposes that he even exists.”

“Yep, and I’m still 100% confident that I’m right about that, but even if I’m not, then surely one of them would have taken the cure before they get very far unless it’s Katherine, in which case, I’ll still steal it from her, and you can have it.”

“That’s still assuming that there’s only a small amount of it.”

“Oh, there is.” His eyebrow arched, and I smirked. “I’d say one dose of the cure is a small amount.”

Sitting up in interest, he said, “That’s not your usual conjecture.” No, it was not. I did a poor job of hiding my smile at having been caught, and he leaned forward to conspiratorially ask, You wouldn’t happen to know Aramaic would you?”

“Well, unlike you, I can’t speak it.” I’d heard them talking about it with him last night when they were still working on it. That was before Elena came to the conclusion that it was best not to go looking for the cure this morning. They’d stayed away from it all day since then. I think their main goal now was finding the others and getting them to stop their treasure hunt.

Knowing exactly what I’d omitted in my answer, Klaus said, “But you can read it.”

“Not as well as Latin, but it does crop up from time to time in ancient texts.” 

He briefly looked over his shoulder before turning back to me to say, “Your artistic expression with the floor this morning . . . That wouldn’t have happened to immediately follow you seeing images of the tattoo would it? If the idea of it was grotesque to you, I can’t imagine studying it would have been much better.” I gave him the flicker of a smile, and he said, “It isn’t just the guitar. I knew you had a number of secrets, because the more of them you accumulate, the calmer you are, but your treasure trove is better than I imagined.”

Was that a look of pride I saw? It's wasn’t that big of a deal. I knew the other three had been worn out after everything that happened yesterday, and when you’re worn out, you sleep heavier, whether you’re a vampire or not. I crept into where the sword was next to the pictures of the tattoo in the other living room where Tyler and Caroline had been sleeping, remembered where everything was, so I could put the pictures back the way I’d found them, carefully picked everything up using both hands, and all of that was easy. Sitting in the fancy dining room with Alice where I wouldn’t grab the attention of Klaus, who may have been lost in his thoughts, but who surely hadn’t slept his entire time in this house, had been the difficult part, as was putting the pictures back on my way down after brushing my teeth, because he’d been more alert in the early morning hours. 

He’d definitely heard me go in the other living room that time, because he’d been standing in his usual spot in the doorway when I came out carrying the sword. I got to my floor doodles, because, honestly, after staring at those photos and determining that one that looked like a lady being stabbed in the back probably had been Alice, I felt like it, and then topped my ‘artistic expression’ off with my She-Ra impersonation to wake every one up, which kept them from suspecting a thing, because who thinks someone playing around like a child might have had another reason for having the sword? “My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night – “

“But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends – It gives a lovely light.” Klaus grinned as he finished the poem and sat back before studying me. “That modesty of yours is why I won’t shower you with flowery words of praise, but I will say that you have my word . . . I won’t infringe on your boundaries like that again.” Didn’t mean he wouldn’t in other ways, and it’s not like it was a common occurrence for me to be running low on vervain, but I’d take what I could get.


	71. Good Luck on Your Release

“Is this supposed to be some kind of a joke?” Tyler and I looked at Caroline as she waved a piece of paper around saying, “I’m not singing this.”

I didn’t even have to respond this time. Instead, I let Tyler do the talking and discreetly looked in my jacket pocket for the time on my phone. We’d mostly been doing this to kill time before the full moon reached its apex, which should be just about any minute now. “Why the hell not?”

At Tyler’s annoyance, Caroline’s dwindled. “I guess I just . . . it doesn’t feel right.”

“We’ve been working on this for like an hour. You said you would.”

Wanting to diffuse Tyler’s growing annoyance, I asked, “What’s the issue?”

“You know what the issue is.” The blank look on my face made her roll her eyes. “Why did you pick this song?”

“Because it’s the one we were working on yesterday?” She’d been listening to us practice the whole time and getting a feel for the song, so she could sing it along with us. It was actually coming together quite nicely, but I’d written the lyrics for _West Coast_ down for her, and now she was backing out on it.

“You seriously didn’t have an ulterior motive for choosing this song?”

In confusion, I answered, “Other than it being the song he learned yesterday – no.” 

Looking at the paper again, her brow furrowed before she asked, “Well, could we split it up?”

“How?”

“I don’t know, like you take some of the lines, and I’ll take some?”

“You know I don’t sing in front of people . . . well, I did once, but they’re all dead now, so make of that what you will.“

Elena who had been sitting quietly while she watched us asked, “What?”

“Oh, yeah, I’m pretty sure most of the baby vampires from that bar were my audience, so any memories of that performance went with them . . . some of them were pretty pervy anyway, so it’s a minor miracle they lived as long as they did with Damon being there.”

Sounding a little shrill, Caroline, asked, “Are you messing with me right now?”

“No. I played “ _Should I Stay, or Should I Go?_ ”

Her face froze before she quickly said, “So, you’re saying you really got up on a stage and sang in front of an audience?” 

“And played the guitar.”

A disappointed Caroline asked, “Without me?!”

“I was on vacation.”

“Yeah, but . . . that’s supposed to be our thing. We practice, but we haven’t actually performed anything together since that song you played for me to sing to show my Dad I wasn’t afraid of him. You always say you hate performing in front of people, because you hate having all those eyes on you, but for Damon, you got up there and were front and center in front of a crowd?”

“In fairness to me, I did agree to do the Winter Festival with you, but we were both a little busy.”

“But the point is you did it in front of a bar full of people, so why can’t you do it now?”

“For starters, the bar wasn’t full of people, because it's the off season.”

“Oh my god, I forgot how frustrating you can be! Stop picking apart what I said instead of acknowledging what I meant, which is that there isn’t even close to what could be considered a crowd here, and you still won’t do it.”

“Well, he did dare me to do it.“

“Then I dare you to sing this song with me!”

“He also said he’d kill anyone in the bar who booed.”

Throwing her eyes to the ceiling, she muttered, “Well, I’m not killing anyone here, so you’re just going to have to live with it if they boo.”

“And most importantly, he didn’t think I’d do it, so I really just wanted to prove him wrong.”

“Fine! Then, I don’t think you’ll do it either.”

“Now, see, I really don’t believe that. I think you’re just saying that to get me to do what you want.” Glancing at Tyler, I said, “Tyler, you’re the one who has been working on this song. What do you want to do?” 

His eyes scanned the ceiling as he shook his head and muttered, “Get out of this house.”

“Funny you should mention that.” Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I turned it around to face him saying, “We’ve actually been working on this for an hour and a half. I’d say that moon’s finally reached its apex.” Tyler looked from my phone to me and quickly scrambled to his feet but came to an abrupt halt when he turned to head for the door. I looked over my shoulder, and yeah, Klaus was standing near the bottom of the stairs. “Looks like I was right.”

After a brief staring contest with Tyler, who frankly seemed a little worried, Klaus looked down at me and asked, “Ready?”

“Almost. Let me put this away.” I got up to start putting my guitar in its case. As long as he was standing there, I didn’t think anyone else would try the door, but I wanted to be certain of that, so I tried to be quick about packing up my stuff. 

“So that’s it?”

I glanced at Caroline over my shoulder as I fastened the latches on my case. “Yeah.”

Elena tried, “You’re not going to do the song now?”

Nice try with the disappointed voice, but I can’t imagine that me walking out in the middle of a song felt anywhere close to as disheartening as it was to start working on a car with someone that you’d never be able to finish with them because that person had been killed. “Nope.”

Getting annoyed, Caroline asked, “Well, how about saying good bye?”

Picking my case up by the handle, I went to the box of Alec and mine’s things and stuck it under my arm that was attached to the hand holding my case. “Bye.” 

My last stop was the sword. Stooping down, I picked the hilt up with my free hand and was pretty glad that my car was so close. I turned to leave, and Elena was standing there. Maybe I should’ve left at least one of my hands free. “I haven’t had a chance to give you my list.”

“I thought you presented your case to me yesterday.”

“I wasn’t done with it yet. I think you should see it before you go.”

“I’m sure it’s fine for a work in progress, but you don’t really need me to check it over.”

“No, it’s my argument. I think it’s strong enough now to – “

“Don’t you have people to call? They are with Katherine right now, and they think she’s you. Shouldn’t you do something about that?” 

Her head whipped around, like she was looking for something. “Yeah, no, you’re right. Wait here while I get my phone. Caroline, can I get their new numbers from - ” She started heading in the direction of the fancy living room where I’d thrown her phone, but stopped when she got nearer to Klaus. Her eyes darted to the room where he’d been imprisoned before she turned back to look in the direction of the fancy dining room. Glancing at me, she asked, “What about Alice . . . and Kol?” 

I shared a look with Klaus, and he answered, “I’ll send someone to collect both of them. See that they’re not disturbed until I do.” 

I gave him a subtle nod of thanks before lifting my case in the direction of the door. “Shall we?”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “After you.”

I got to the threshold, and considering there was a part of me that was a little concerned that there was something else keeping me here other than the same spell that’d been put on Klaus, I’ve ever felt so relieved to be able to step through a doorway, but I only put one foot out and kept the other in the house as I turned back to look at him. I’d meant what I said. We’d been locked up together, so we were leaving together. “Klaus, would you like to leave this house with me?” Realizing how literal I was being with what I’d said, his smile grew. Giving me a charming bow, he answered, “It would be an honor,” before taking both the sword and the box for me with relative ease. 

He offered me his free arm, and taking it as I walked out beside him, I mused, “I’m not getting that sword back, am I?”

“It was never yours.”

“It’s not really yours either.”

“It’s far too heavy for you.”

“I like the look of it.”

“And yet you treated it rather carelessly. If my father had witnessed what you did with it – “

“I can only imagine. I guess it’s a good thing I killed him and another reason for me to keep Silas from bringing him back.”

He glanced down at me over his shoulder, and a rather loud, “What the – “ behind us made us stop and turn to look back at Imelda’s handiwork. She’d done a version of the reverse invitation spell that she'd put on the lake house for Damon, but she hadn’t liked the idea of me locking myself into a house of vampires and hybrids, so instead of having the owner be the one who could release them, only I could. Tyler looked equal parts confused and angry as he looked around the threshold. “What the hell is this?!” 

Caroline rushed up beside him and found she was just as unable to get through the door as him, but unlike him, she knew straight away who to address as she yelled, “Let us out!” 

“Hey, where’s my phone?” Elena came walking up to the door and tried to step out so she could ask me where I’d put it, but found she was just as stuck as the other two. 

Setting my guitar case down, I pulled her phone out of my pocket and asked, “This phone?” Reaching into my pocket again, I pulled out Caroline’s phone. “Or did you mean this one?” Another pocket produced Tyler’s phone. “Or was it this one?” With a shrug, I added, “Or is it the house phone? Because I threw that one out the back door.”

“Eve, this isn’t funny!”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think it’s pretty funny. Make sure it goes on your list – inappropriate sense of humor.”

“Are you seriously just going to leave us here?!” Turning her attention to Klaus, Caroline tried, “You said we had a blank slate.”

Looking down at me, he answered, “Well, that was my deal with them. Did they make one with you?”

I slowly shook my head. “How could they? In what way are the conditions right for us to call it even?”

“You haven’t exactly killed anyone on their side yet, have you?”

“Nope . . . and if you were me, what would you do?”

Pondering it in amusement, a few moments later, he said, “Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t be fast enough to catch them, so I wouldn’t bother letting them out for a good chase. I’d probably just set the house on fire now for their friends to find when they come back.”

“That’s it? I mean, it would allow me to finally finish the valiant effort I’ve put in on destroying this house, but is that really the worst that the Great Evil has?”

Exhaling a laugh, he asked, “How would you better it?”

“I suppose I could drive home the point that there’s nothing they can do about me using whatever means are necessary to stop the others, swing by the post office pretending to be Elena and ask them to hold all post, because I'm going out of town for a while, so the mailman can’t be coaxed inside the house and eaten. I could also send the sheriff a text message from her daughter’s phone for the same purpose. They’d start to desiccate the way they would have left me to wither away until I was deemed worthy of being released.”

“Seems fitting.”

“Mm. Of course, then I’d return with the severed heads of the others to put outside the windows . . . the ones at the back at course, so the neighbors can’t see, although they don’t seem to have noticed the number of rather loud fights that have gone on over here, so maybe it wouldn’t really matter where I put them, but I wouldn’t throw them inside, because why give anyone in that house even the comfort of a severed head? They’d be broken mentally and emotionally before they finish the final stages of desiccation, and . . .” His eyebrows arched, and I added, “then I’d set the house on fire, because I don’t leave survivors . . . with the exception of one.”

I suppose you could say the professor was one as well, but him being human meant he fell into a different category, a newer one that I didn’t have all worked out yet, the one for humans who were involved in the supernatural and threats because of what they did with that knowledge. They were human monsters without the ability to be prosecuted, because there were no human laws out there to address the things they did, so I think they fell under my jurisdiction, but I just wasn’t quite there yet as far as eliminating them entirely went. For the purposes of our conversation, I was strictly talking about supernatural people, and Klaus’s demeanor dimmed somewhat as he realized who I’d meant and why I’d brought her up. “And she came to think of you as her savior. So, what is it that you would actually do?” 

“Not let them break me.” Knowing that I was referencing when Alice had said I wasn’t broken and what being broken had meant to her, he gave me a nod to let me know he approved, and my attention returned to the house. “Tyler, what you said to me yesterday has me thinking about a few things from a different perspective, and that, your understanding, and sincere condolences for Alice mean more than you know. Would you like to come out here and get your phone?” It didn’t have any numbers on it that they would find useful. I’d checked.

He looked between Caroline and Elena before looking up at the top of the door frame, hesitantly stuck his arm out, saw that he could, and relaxed as he stepped outside. Holding his hand out for his phone, he said, “You really had me going there for a second.” Leaning closer as I handed him the phone, he whispered, “You’re gonna let them out, right?”

“That is an excellent question.” He hesitated, and I tilted my head to the side to indicate he should move, so I could see the other two. “Caroline . . . do you remember what you said to Elena at the intervention after it literally blew up in my face?”

Looking uncomfortable, she finally said, “How much is one person supposed to take? She isn’t going to wait around forever while you figure out whether or not you want to be her sister.”

What started as a pause became a full stop, and I asked, “And that’s it?”

Exhaling a sigh, she finally said, “If I lose my best friend because of how selfish you can be sometimes, then I don’t know if I want to be your friend anymore.”

“You didn’t actually say that.”

Pure confusion as she asked, “What?”

“That might’ve been what you were thinking, but you were cut off before you could finish. You said, ‘If I lose my best friend because of how selfish you can be sometimes, then –‘ and then Bonnie said, ‘With best friends like you, who needs enemies?’” Caroline bowed her head in shame, and I sighed, “But she was wrong.” When she looked at me, I said, “You’re a mediator, and sometimes that means both sides end up being pissed at you . . . We’re not okay. I’m not going to pretend like we are, but I get it. I’m just stuck on what you were actually thinking about helping them do. I didn’t have any faith that you wouldn’t have done it because of the lying, so I took the choice out of your hands . . . Maybe that was wrong of me, because maybe you would’ve proven me wrong, and if it was, then I’d like to give your choice back to you . . . Do you stay, or do you go?”

She was a little teary, and her eyes were going back and forth, while she considered it. “I’ll stay.”

“What? No.” Tyler took a step forward, and I put my hand out to stop him.

“Why?”

“Because I think maybe you’re the only one who can let us out, and if you are, then it means you’ll have to come back, and – “ Her face crumpled as she said, “if it’s the only way to make you even start to believe again that I’m your friend, then it’s what I’m willing to do.”

I looked at Elena, and she was watching Caroline. “Elena? What about you?” Slowly shaking her head, she looked at me, and she was torn, but she was also even more calculated in her answer than Caroline had been, and Caroline’s answer had actually been pretty calculated. It’s just that if Caroline was willing to fall on her sword to get me to come back, then there was no need for both of them to do it. “I can’t . . . I can’t stay here.”

I wasn’t particularly surprised by Caroline’s outburst. “Are you kidding me!” 

Elena turned to her and tried to explain. “I’m sorry, but Katherine’s with them. I have no idea what she’s going to do or what she’s said to them . . . “ Looking at me, she added, “And I promised I wouldn’t let them do anything to you, so I need to go with you if I’m going to keep it.” 

She was right – to an extent – not about her wanting to keep her promise to me, because she was more than likely just using that to cover for the fact that she couldn’t stand being left behind anymore when the others were walking into danger alongside a danger they thought was her, but she was right about her being a good in for me with the others. The problem was that it hinged on me trusting that she’d do the right thing and to not think that she’d been playing her own games inside this house by saying things she thought I wanted to hear, and I simply did not trust her. Pocketing Caroline’s phone, I shrugged. “Okay, Elena, come out and get your phone.” 

With one last apologetic look at Caroline, Elena stepped out, and Caroline tried to put a brave face on how she was feeling, like she gave Elena a nod to let her to know it was all right, because she understood, but she couldn’t hide how hurt she was to have to shoulder the burden of being left behind alone. Driving a wedge between them hadn’t been my intention, but I didn’t think she’d feel bad for long. Elena went to take her phone from me, and we didn’t quite connect before I let it go. It started to drop. Using her vampire reflexes, she dipped down to catch it, and I reached forward with both hands as fast as humanly possible to snap her neck. 

Tyler jumped at the unexpectedness of it. In the background, Caroline seemed to flinch too, and as Elena’s body fell to the side on the porch, I pulled out my phone, murmuring, “You were right. You are stubborn, but I’m done arguing, and you are not coming with me.” I hit send when I was done, saw her phone light up, and looked at Caroline. “Caroline, I’m keeping your phone for now. I’ll bring it back to you when I can, but in the meantime, I invite you to leave, so you can go home and tell your Mom not to worry. She’s been texting all day.” 

She came out a little apprehensively and stopped to look down at Elena. “Was that really necessary?”

“I’m out of vervain, and she wouldn’t stay down as long with a wooden bullet to the head, so yes.” 

I turned to leave, and she quickly said, “You can’t just leave her here.”

“Move her inside if you’re worried about it, but time isn’t something I have the luxury of right now. It works the same way that being invited into a house does, so it’s not like you’ll get stuck inside again.” The others had gone to the lake house, or that’s where they’d been as of a couple of hours ago, but I didn’t know how long they’d stay there. Not as long as my dream had indicated. That probably had been a bit of wishful thinking considering they had the professor now. Pretty sure that Bonnie could use a locator spell to find the tombstone if it had been his. He’d certainly carted it around with him enough for it to probably be considered his anyway.

My foot hit the bottom step, and Caroline said my name, but based on her tone, it wasn’t to scold me, so I stopped to look back at her. “Be careful.”

“Sure.”

“By a normal person’s standards.”

“Definitely a good way to get killed . . . Seriously, you need to call your Mom using Tyler’s phone if nothing else.” She gave me a hopeful, albeit hesitant nod, and it looked like I was off on my next adventure. I just had to drop Klaus off at his house first. I had brought him here, so it was probably the decent thing to do, and he seemed to think I should if him getting into the passenger seat of my car was any indication, or that’d better be what he was thinking, because I didn’t want to bring him along for the ride any more than I’d wanted to bring Elena.


	72. The Race Is On

This wasn’t going the way I’d hoped at all, and it was irksome, so much so that I was having a difficult time reading through the research I’d brought with me. I hadn’t been able to stop by my Mom’s lock up, because I didn’t have the time to do it. When I’d texted Imelda to tell her I was out of the house and to find out where Damon was, she’d told me she couldn’t pin him down to an exact location, because he was on the move, but she’d been able to narrow it down to a radius that no longer included the lake house. I’d looked up the area she’d said, and it was smack dab in the middle of nowhere, so either someone had caught him and dumped him there, or there was a chance they were heading for Richmond. 

Now, I hardly thought that they thought that Silas was stored anywhere near Richmond, but what was in Richmond was an international airport. Why head straight there from the lake house? Because they knew that Klaus and I had been released, so now it really was a race. I suppose that given the stakes, I couldn’t really complain about the transportation. A private jet was fast, whether Klaus had chartered it or simply owned it, I didn't know for sure, but it had certainly been waiting at a closer airport when we got there, and having him around to compel away any issues had also allowed me to keep all the weapons I had with me, so it was all very practical if I wanted to get to that cave on the island first. 

The flight attendant approached me with a smile before saying, “The captain will be starting his descent soon if you want to put your things away and come to the cockpit to observe the landing.”

Uh huh. ‘Observe’ the landing the way I’d been allowed to ‘observe’ the take off? “Uh, thanks.” She went about her business topping Klaus up with more alcohol mixed with, from the looks of it, a squeeze of fresh blood from her hand. I watched her until she left, and then looking at my hybrid chaperone, grumbled, “I’m not afraid of flying, you know.” It was the crashing that I thought was problematic, and I wouldn’t even call what I felt about that fear, because I already had a plan to have Klaus cushion my fall. Of course, we’d probably have to be low enough for him not to take considerable damage himself when he hit the ground, and he wouldn’t be able to protect all of us, but I think that at that point it’d be every person for themselves when it came to clinging onto him for dear life. Pretty sure I was the only one thinking that, so surely, that gave me an advantage.

Engrossed in what he was reading, he muttered, “It’s the first time you’ve been on a plane.”

“And?”

“And the first thing you did when we got on board was ask where the parachutes are.”

“I think it’s a perfectly reasonable question.” He finally put his book down to look at me, and I said, “I’m not a little kid.” His eyes flicked to the wings pinned to my shirt, and I quickly said, “Hey, I earned these. The captain said I did a great job reading through his check list for him.”

Attempting to maintain a straight face, Klaus retorted, “You, my dear, have an issue with not being in control. It stands to reason that you might have a problem with putting control over this plane into the hands of someone else.”

“So, what, you thought that you’d just put me in charge of overseeing the cockpit?”

They’d certainly handed that checklist over to me the second I walked in there, like they’d been instructed to do it. “Yes, but if you feel just as comfortable staying where you are for the landing, then by all means . . . ” Glancing at my research, he asked, “Have you found anything useful?”

Looking down at the papers in my lap, I murmured, “I’m not sure . . . I get the impression that the one who has to lower the veil isn’t him. I think it’s Bonnie based on what I see in the professor’s notes . . . and I found a few articles from recent enough times, and . . . I think Silas might have a bit of a blood drinking problem.”

Sitting up, Klaus looked at the newspaper articles in my hands before he got up to sit in the empty seat next to me. I handed him the articles, one on some miners that had built a well on the island where we were going and who had all eventually been found drained of blood. That one was from decades ago, but there was a more recent one about some kids who went there on spring break and were again found exsanguinated. “It looks like they did this themselves.”

“Yeah . . . but why is the question, and I think it’s because he needs it just like a vampire.”

“It’s probably just some other vampire that has made that island its home “

“Except, as you said, the miners and the students did it to themselves – no bite marks are mentioned or the obligatory animal attack excuse to explain the bites - and I didn’t say he was a vampire, just that he needs blood like one. I think he used those mental powers I told you he has to get them to give him all their blood.”

“Like compulsion.”

Parroting what he’d said back to me, I nodded. “Like compulsion . . . but something tells me it’s also not . . . Maybe I’m just in mourning, and that’s what is making me think this, but what if he’s kind of like Alice? Like he was a witch, right? What if he was also psychic to some degree the way she was, and when he obtained his immortality, it led to the blood drinking and not being able to do magic, which is why Bonnie is needed to drop the veil instead of him, and his psychic powers have been amplified by the transformation?”

“Are you saying he’s really the Original vampire?”

No. Why did he keep saying the guy was a vampire? Oh. His entire identity was wrapped up in he and his family being the first, so the mere notion that Silas had vampiric qualities was a threat to that on some level. That was going to make this conversation difficult. “More like a prototype. I think your Mom stole whatever spell went into making him immortal and improved upon it.”

“That’s not possible.”

“So, there’s absolutely no way that she could’ve gotten it from someone else, no other witches living or dead that she communed with at the time who might have been a distant relative of Qetsiyah? Because I think Bonnie is, so if Qetsiyah’s relatives still exist today, they had to be around in your time. Witches have always passed spells down from generation to generation with grimoires or through oral traditions, so isn’t it possible that your Mom got her hands on the spell that made him immortal from someone who was a precursor to the modern day Bennetts?”

He had someone in mind. I could see it on his face. It was the same look of remembrance almost every vampire had when they were going over something distant in their past. “No.” Sitting back, he looked down at the pile of research I’d brought and reached down to pick some up saying, “As you said, it’s probably just you mourning Alice.”

Settling back into my seat, I opened the professor’s journal again and muttered, “Liar.” 

He quickly looked at me, and I stayed focused on the page, as I said, “He would have been a well-known figure for the people of your generation, because he was to Alice, who was on a completely different continent, so Esther almost certainly heard of him. His story has just been lost in the time since, because you guys replaced him in the mythos with your enhanced speed, fangs, and superior strength – all things Esther added to the immortality spell because of the werewolves. Maybe blood drinking and mind control are side-effects of the immortality spell, in general, but vampires lose the ability to compel anyone when they’re desiccated - even you I’d bet. Silas clearly still has that ability since he messed with the professor’s mind and got all these miners and students to shed their own blood for him thousands of years after he was left to rot, which means that mind-controlling ability is amplified in him, probably because of the psychic ability he had before becoming immortal . . . and you are not going on that island with me.”

“You think you can stop me, do you?” 

He was partly mocking me, mostly serious, and I looked at him over my shoulder to study him for a few seconds before saying, “My control issues are a drop in the bucket compared to yours. He might be slow, and he might not have the physical strength that you do or have your fangs, but that’s even more reason for him to target you, turn you into his lap dog, and send you to eliminate anyone and everyone who gets in his way, including Elijah and Rebekah, and there’d be nothing you could do about it.” 

Looking back down at the journal, I shrugged and added, “And I prefer the guy who is at the helm right now. His temper might get the better of him from time to time, and he might have a heart with hundreds of fractures that don’t help with his volatility, but it’s a big heart, and it hasn’t been entirely shattered, because he’s protected it so well. I’d hate to see that destroyed . . . and don’t forget that nature gave even you weaknesses, like vervain, wolfsbane, and the unmentionable tree. He’d know them the second he saw you if he can read your mind, and you wouldn’t get to him fast enough to even temporarily kill him when all he has to do to stop you is think.”

“You’re being manipulative.”

“And honest, but as you said through your fake Elena, if it works . . . You’re going to have to trust me to get to that cure and use it on him. If it makes you feel better, I’ll send you a video or something when I find him to prove to you that he’s real.” He didn’t respond, so I looked at him again, and finally said, “Unless you think him being there is a possibility now because I won’t shut up about it.”

Rather than admit that, he asked, “What makes you think you could bring him down if you don’t think I can?”

“Well, for starters, I wouldn’t have to fight you off when he sends you after me . . . That’s about as far as I’ve gotten. I don’t want to go in there with any concrete plans that might be intercepted over thought radio.”

“And what about protecting yourself from being compelled to do what he wants?”

“Well, I hardly think a human girl is going to do the same kind of damage that you or even one of the others can do. Maybe he’ll be more focused on the vampires and witch?” Yeah, I knew it was as flimsy as he seemed to think it was based on the look he gave me. “I’m working on it.”

“You have until we get to there to figure it out.”

“But – “

“If you can convince me by then, I’ll stay on the shore instead of going with you wherever you think he is, but that’s as far as I’m willing to concede to you on this.”

Was he here because he didn’t know where the island was and wanted to make sure that cure was destroyed or for some other reason? “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Do you even know how you’re going to get to the island from the airport?”

“A car and a boat.”

“And can someone your age rent either?” 

Actually, that was a good question. I saw him start to smirk at my being momentarily stumped, and quickly said, “I’m sure that with enough money anyone can do anything.”

“You brought that much cash, did you?”

“I brought a card.”

“And you think people who are doing something illegal for you will take a card when that creates a paper trail?”

“Surely there will be an ATM where I could withdraw the funds.“

“How much are your daily limits for cash withdraw?” 

Enough to pay rent at the old place and still have enough left over for an emergency? “I don’t know, like 1000 maybe?”

“Domestically or internationally?” At my blank expression, he smirked before asking, “And how much do you think bribery costs?”

I was guessing that it was more than 20 dollars a bottle of some kind of alcohol. “I could go into a bank to withdraw the money in person.”

“You’d have to find a bank that would do cross-border banking, and since you will be withdrawing large amounts, you’ll most likely need a passport. If it’s over 10,000, they’d also be obliged to report it to the government.”

“10,000?!” I slumped back in my seat to ponder my dilemma. I didn’t have a passport. In fact, the way he’d gotten me to agree to him being here this long was by pointing out that I’d need one to get on a flight even if it was to Canada, and he’d also said that in addition to not being able to bring my weapons, I’d have to wait in long lines at the airport if I flew commercial. I hadn’t had to deal with any of that to get on this plane. He’d simply compelled us through the airport and onto it. “Grand theft auto and then boat?” 

“Would you get a sail boat or a motorized one despite all the noise they bring?” 

I’d only ever been in one kind of boat. “Row boat?” 

“How far away is the island from the mainland again?” 

Yeah, it was way too far. “Like 200 miles.”

His eyebrows arched. “Do you have any idea how survive in the real world without having a vampire on your shoulder?” 

“I do fine on hunts by myself.”

“Short ones lasting no more than a few days at a time, correct?” My answer was a scowl that remained firmly in place as I looked forward. “Consider the possibility that even if you can successfully steal both a car and boat without garnering attention, Katerina has most likely set you up to take the blame for things she does in an attempt to slow you down. What will you do if you are detained?” When I still didn’t respond, he said, “You need me to get you there.”

I shot him a look. “I don’t need – “ There was a rather loud noise, and I quickly looked down at the floor. “What the hell was that?”

“I believe it was the landing gear. Perhaps if you’d been reading off the checklist for landing, you would have expected it.” 

I looked back at him over my shoulder with wide eyes, and he seemed to be trying very hard not to laugh. “You’re not very nice.”

That did make him laugh. “Well, I am pure evil, so what did you expect?” 

“I expect you to vampire sprint me away from this plane if there’s even a hint of an issue with the landing. That’s what I expect.”

His eyebrows arched in amusement, and he said, “As you wish . . . I won’t even point out how that was tantamount to you admitting that you do need me.”

“Good, because that would be in very bad taste, I would think.”

“Oh, the worst . . . of course, I’ll be expecting it at some point after we land . . . I think it might be more worthwhile if I wait to point it out then.”


	73. Woefully unprepared

So far, everything had been fine. I hadn’t been able to rent a car from Toronto where we landed, because we weren’t in Quebec or whatever, and I wasn’t 21. I could, however, get a taxi to Quebec and rent a car from there, so that’s what I did, which wasn’t particularly cheap, but I’d managed it. I also used the time in the back of the taxi to see how old you had to be to rent a boat. “But you only have to be 16, and I’m 18.” 

“I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Why not? Are you out of boats?” I looked out the window to check, and added, “You don’t look like you are.” My attention returned to him, and I said, “If you’re out of cheap ones, then how much would that one cost?”

“Oh, well, I’m afraid I can’t let you take one for anything.” 

My eyes narrowed as I leaned over the counter to look at the man who was denying me my next mode of transportation. Recognizing the hint of vacancy behind the eyes, I leaned back. Damn. It couldn’t have been by much, probably not even an hour, but the others had already been here. It didn’t matter which one of them had done it. One of them had compelled him to either not rent a boat to anyone who looked like Katherine or more likely to anyone at all. Doubt they’d take the time to come back to undo the compulsion, so how long was he going to keep this job if he couldn’t rent boats to anyone anymore? “Are you Mark?” 

The man blinked in confusion, and I pointed at the certificate from the local chamber of commerce saying, “Mark McDonald, the owner of Nova Scotia Water Rentals.” 

“If you want to speak to the owner, then he’s gone out on a run, and I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

As long as this man wasn’t him, I could work with that. If I couldn’t find a loophole to the compulsion, then good old Mark would be getting a call from me, and I’d get him to give me a boat, since he owned the place and had the authority to do it . . . unless of course, he’d been compelled to go on the run he was on right now and wouldn't take calls, then I’d really just have to focus on finding a loophole with this guy. “Then it’s a good thing I don’t want to speak to him. I just wanted to know if you were him. Why do you work here?”

“It’s my second job. It’s slow this time of year, but Mark keeps me on, because I need the hours.”

“Uh huh . . . Because you’re supporting people, saving up for something, or just need something to do with your time?”

“Why would you need to know that?”

“Because I’m thinking of hiring you myself, and I want to know where my money will be going - gambling debts, mortgage, retirement fund, every day survival, fortifying the basement so you can lock a girl up down there. What?”

“Child support takes a good chunk out of my wages if I want to pay the rest of my bills.”

Fair enough. Looking around the room, I asked, “And you work here for minimum wage or commission?”

“12 dollars an hour.”

I nodded before saying, “Part-time?”

“That’s right.”

A bit more than his normal week’s wages for part-time work seemed fair if he was going to be out of a job soon. “I’ll give you 300 cash in hand for the day starting now.”

His eyebrows arched, and he shrewdly asked, “What about my shift here?”

“You can still finish it, so you won’t be out anything. You’ll just be working for me at the same time.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“Does it matter if you get my money just the same?”

“No, I suppose not.”

Then he probably didn’t have the strongest character, and I shouldn’t feel bad if I only gave him a one-time payment. Pulling out some 100 dollar bills, I asked, “So do we have a deal?”

“Well, yeah, sure.”

“Then the first thing I want you to do is donate this to the business, and I’d like a receipt.” If he decided to call the cops on me after I left, then I wanted some proof that I’d paid to rent the boat. Shaking his head he took the money and started writing out the receipt. I told him the name to use, one that matched one of my driver’s licences that I had on me, and he tore the receipt out of the book before handing it to me. “And now, I want you to arrange a boat for me to take.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you take a boat for anything.”

“But you aren’t letting me take one _for anything_ , because there’s no exchange, which is what ‘for anything’ means. You already have the job, so it’s not even in exchange for that. I simply told you to arrange for me to take a boat, the way I would any personal assistant. You just happen to be in the right position to do that without a go-between because of your other job.”

I fanned the 300 dollars out on the counter for him to see, and he looked from it to me and back down to it before sighing as he reached forward and said, “Last boat on the dock on your right . . . When will you have it back?”

“A day or two at most.”

“If Mark finds out – “

“I’m sure he’ll be fine with the donation he received, but you’re gonna want to start looking for a new job if you can’t rent boats out to people anymore.” I started to turn away from him and tossed a look at the money in his hand before saying, “And as your employer, I want you to take a 10 minute break to call your kid and/or kids.” Didn’t want any fail safes in the compulsion to kick in, like he was to immediately alert the coast guard or something if he saw one of the boats being taken. 

Tapping the cash on the counter, he grinned, “You know what? I think I will. Something tells me Santa might be able to bring a few more presents from the wish list this year.” 

I was so tempted to give him a Christmas bonus just for that, but Klaus cleared his throat to get my attention. He tilted his head in the direction of the door, like ‘we’ve wasted enough time,’ and I nodded. Glancing back, I said, “Well, I’m glad to hear it, and when you’re done, get back to enjoying the rest of your day. Good luck on any future endeavors.”

I waited until he’d gone into the back room before leaving with Klaus, and as soon as we were outside, he said, “That was . . . colorful to say the least.”

“Mm . . . there’s a reason my Mom started compelling people she’d compelled to just not talk to me.” The corners of his mouth curled up, and he stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. Anyone would think it was to stave off a chill in the air, but he didn’t feel those . . . unless. “Am I making you cold?”

“Persistently so for days now.” 

I hadn’t considered it beyond the difficulties I’d had in getting enough water, but he was probably right. Except the night that Kol and Alice died . . . I’d started freezing Elena. I hadn’t frozen Alice. Any tears I may have shed over her hadn’t been frozen. I hadn’t frozen the orange juice, and now I was wondering if I actually hadn’t been holding the meat tenderizer differently at all. I’d like to know why, but for once, I think I might’ve found something that I didn’t want to do an experiment on if it meant recreating the conditions that’d led to it.

Had I just locked down how I was feeling so much that night that I hadn’t made it cold after my outburst with the wind and the ice? I mean, I was in shock, but I’d still shed some tears over Alice, and I’d been simmering with anger. Had my curse tired itself out for a while? Maybe. The next time I saw Elena after that was a few hours later when Klaus had grabbed me, and I was pretty sure that I hadn’t frozen him. His blood hadn’t frozen in my mouth anyway. 

That night, while I was sleeping, Klaus had given me his jacket. Is that when the curse had started to make my surroundings cold again? I had trouble with the meat tenderizer the next morning, and I froze the water on the steps that afternoon just before Caroline made her first appearance. I’d had even more difficulty drinking water after that, so I really must’ve started making my surroundings much colder after that too, and that’s what I hadn’t considered. I’d actually turned Elena’s house into something of an ice box for everyone but me. Wasn’t sticking someone in a cold interrogation room supposed to break them down faster? Hm. Maybe that’d had some impact on Elena? Hopefully not. I wanted her remorse to be real and not for show, but I just wasn’t sure.

“Sorry.” Klaus looked down at me, and I explained, “I think exposure to extreme cold is considered a form of torture.”

“I wouldn’t call it torture . . . There’s something almost pleasant about it.”

“It makes you feel something you haven’t been able to feel since you were alive?”

He considered it. I suppose it’d been so much longer for him than it had for even Damon that it wasn’t just a sensation he hadn’t felt since he was alive, but more a sensation he couldn’t remember feeling at all anymore. “Let’s just say that given the time of year it feels . . . appropriate.” 

We neared the end of the pier, and the boat we were meant to take came into view behind some of the larger ones near it. Definitely not a row boat . . . not a sail boat either because it was winter, and those had apparently been stored for that reason, so I guess that’s what my answer to Klaus should have been on his question of what type of boat I thought I should get. He’d made a valid point about the motor though. It looked like we’d been given some kind of a small motorized wooden boat, a dinghy maybe? I mean, it was tiny, and why hadn’t it been stored away with the other boats? Maybe they needed a couple to be operational in the event of emergencies out on the islands around here or because people came up to fish? I honestly didn’t know. I wasn’t a boat person at all. “So, I guess we’ll just remove the cover, and I’ll see you when I get back?”

“This isn’t the shore I meant, and you know it.” I looked up at Klaus, and he added, “And you haven’t given me a suitable explanation of how you plan to keep Silas out of your head, nor am I convinced that you can actually pilot this boat to where you are going.” 

Glancing at the motor that had been pulled out of the water and was leaning back against the back of the boat, I said, “How hard could it really be to steer it, and based on movies I’ve seen, I’m pretty sure it starts like a chainsaw, so it should be fine.” 

When my attention returned to him, he was fighting so hard not to throw his eyes to the sky. They stopped just above my head, like he was briefly staring at something in the distance, and then they flicked down to me. “Have you ever actually started a chainsaw?”

Why would I have need of a chainsaw? I got any wood I needed for stakes the old fashioned way with an axe or a hatchet. Was I going to admit that? No. “What’s your point?” 

“You have been left woefully unprepared for the harsh realities of living normal day to day life.”

“I’ll admit that flying here would’ve been a problem without you, but you’re also only saying that because you’re trying to manipulate me into keeping you on this journey that was only ever supposed to be for one.” I wouldn’t say his expression was amused, but it leaned closer to that than annoyed, somewhere in the region of ‘I am right, and you are wrong,’ so I quickly added, “I got us here from the airport, didn’t I?”

He dryly responded, “Yes, bravo,” before adding, “If I hadn’t stopped you back there, I am certain that you would have given that man what little remains of what you were able to take out of the ATM at the airport. You’ve brought no supplies other than the weapons you’re carrying in that duffel bag. What are you going to do about the cold night ahead? While you may not feel the effects of being cold, I’m certain there’s even a point at which that curse will no longer keep you at equilibrium, and your body temperature will drop, so you will succumb to hypothermia the way any other human would.”

The leather jacket that Damon had gotten me had been destroyed the other night in all the fighting, and I wasn’t going to ruin my nice pea coat by taking it out on the sea with the misty spray from the water I was sure there’d be, so I was wearing one of my heavier black hooded sweatshirts and a black knitted hat. That should be fine. “Are you seriously asking me where my coat is?”

Undeterred, he said, “What about food? You didn’t eat on the plane. You haven’t eaten since we got off it. You haven’t bought any to take with you, and you have no idea how long you’re going to be on that island. You’ve barely slept. You didn’t even take advantage of it while you were on the plane or in the taxi. You must be dehydrated by now as well. You’ve yet to consider that we’re going to need more petrol than is currently in the tank of the boat if we want to get there and back. You would’ve died the other night, not because you wanted to die, but because making sure you lived was secondary to you punishing yourself, and I seriously question if you would have ever lived where you do if you had even an inkling of how to find a place yourself, something Damon has been more than willing to take advantage of from what I can tell. You could probably go to school if it’s something you wanted to do so long as you make them close the blinds, sit away from the windows, and don’t touch anyone, but instead, you are managing your studies the way you’ve always done them, which according to Caroline means you are finishing assignments weeks ahead of your classmates without having to learn how to interact with them . . . and where is your umbrella?”

Uh, not sure where I lived or how I was educated really belonged in this discussion at all, but apparently, he was using the conversation to bring up all the little things that annoyed him about how I lived my life. “Um . . . I forgot it, but in my defense, it was dark when we left.”

“And yet we walked past an entire rack of them at the airport. It would appear that despite having been left to fend for yourself for large swaths of your life, you have no idea how to really do it unless you are in a battle scenario.” I huffed out a sigh, but before I could follow it up with a rebuttal, he pulled a pocket sized umbrella out of his pocket and shoved it in my direction. “Here. Take this, and I’ll remove the cover. You look ghastly.”

Taking the umbrella, I murmured, “Ghastly . . . I like that, although I think my descriptor du jour might be ghoulish.”

“You’re not going to argue with what I said?”

Oh, I was going to push back like hell. Pointing the umbrella down to open it, I answered, “Well, I wouldn’t say I’m as tragic as all that, but there’s a hint of truth to it there through all the hyperbole.”

“Hyperbole?!”

Bringing the umbrella up over my head, as he turned to work on the boat cover, I smiled to myself before saying, “I do forget to eat. I do have a tendency to put off sleep. My water intake is inadequate on a good day with this curse. I wasn’t sure how to find a new place after Katherine staked me in the one my parents got for me, so I was fine with Damon taking on the responsibility of finding me one, and I probably do prefer to do my schooling from home, but I wasn’t really interacting with classmates when I was going unless it was Stefan, Rebekah, Tyler, or Caroline. The issue is that a typical classroom structure doesn’t suit me. It’s way too slow of a pace.”

Folding up the tarp, he said, “Which is precisely what I said. I fail to see what made it so hyperbolic.”

“Well, it’s just that most of those things seem trivial, so I don’t really see what makes them such grave character flaws.”

His shoulders hunched as he forced himself not to take the bait and look back at me, but I saw his head shake as he muttered, “The bare essentials of life are trivial to you.”

“Mm . . . when something more important is happening, which is almost all the time, sure . . . and you know, I’m not that bad at interacting with people over the counter, so there’s that.”

That one got him, and he quickly looked back at me over his shoulder before his eyes narrowed. “Need I mention the fact that you asked the man in there if he uses his wages to imprison kidnapped girls?”

“There are all kinds of human monsters out there. He didn’t react to that, so I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have any kidnapping plans, although I suppose there is always the possibility that I may have given him the idea to do it, and now he will.”

His features smoothed somewhat in understanding, “You’re toying with me.”

I fought against a smile and said, “Absolutely,” before ignoring that I’d said it as I continued with my case, “And have I mentioned that Damon’s been teaching me how to cook for a while, so I can kind of do that now too.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“And yet you continue to suffer me. You really deserve a medal.”

“I’d settle for silence and you handing me my bag.”

Picking his bag up from the dock, I handed it to him saying, “If you want silence, does that mean you aren't going to show me how to steer the boat?”

His eyes briefly flicked to the side before they came back to me, and he answered, “If I do and find myself overboard, then – “

Cutting him off, I climbed into the boat saying, “Drama will ensue; bad things will happen. Got it.”

He looked a little like someone who was playing chess when I looked up at him after my flippant response. “I’m not entirely sure the reward is worth having to endure your bratty teenager routine.”

What reward? Seeing the cure destroyed or me calling him a friend someday, because I think he meant the latter, and I found it really annoying that Caroline had unintentionally given him a playbook on how to do that. “Well, you’ve already made it through me massacring most of your hybrids and storming the Mikaelson castle. Are you really prepared to fail at such a minor hurdle?”

“How much of it has been an act?” I was going to need more than that. My expression said as much. “The journey here - how much of it was how you blindly float through life and how much of it was an act to make me underestimate you? The first time we met you said that you’re naïve when you need to be, and of course, as you explained to Elena, it has it’s uses when convincing opponents that you are weak-minded.”

So the question really was how much did I still see him as an opponent that needed to be outmaneuvered, hence, the reason he thought I was going to push him overboard, I suppose. “When I’m researching, I could go all day and night without thinking about food once. Alice used to make me eat or take breaks. Damon does too . . . Caroline loves coming over to clean my room, because it’s always a mess . . . Those things really are trivial to me, especially since the curse makes eating and drinking more cumbersome, and I’m currently in a race that I’m losing if the compelled man we just spoke to is anything to go by, so that takes priority over stopping to buy things I’d need if I were going to be on that island for more than a night, but I really don’t think I will be.”

“If your mind is what makes up for your lack of physical strength and speed, how do you intend to meet the battles you face if you aren’t at your best because you’re tired, hungry, or in need of water?” Yeah, I knew that. I just wasn’t used to someone noticing every single time I didn’t do something I should because they were studying me the way he had apparently been doing the last few days. I nodded to concede his point, and he pushed his bag back towards me as he said, “There’s food and water in here. I suggest you take advantage of it before we get to that island. You can navigate for now and steer on the return journey. Stay here while I go sort out the fuel. I will hunt you down if you’re not here when I get back.”

Taking a seat as he left, I opened the bag to see what he’d brought. The food items were dry, so that seemed promising. The umbrella might help with the mist from the sea, but drinking the water might be troublesome. Also, I found it interesting that he was focusing on these things rather than the fact that I had to be the navigator, because I may have given him the sword, but he didn’t have the pictures of the tattoo, so he was relying entirely on me to get to that island. I was pretty sure that’s why he’d tagged along as far as he had, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he had actually started to buy into what I'd been saying about Silas and was trying to look out for me without admitting it to me and probably himself. If ever there was a comparison to a real life Hell scenario, the last few days were it, and he'd done all right, but we were coming up on the equivalent of the part where we had to get out of Hell, which was the trickiest stretch, so I guess we’d see how he did, and then I'd have my answer. 


	74. Moments Like These

Okay, why were there two boats on the beach? They were bigger than our boat. I’d say they should hold 6. Stefan, Bonnie, Katherine, the professor, and Jeremy all should’ve fit in one. Was one of them Damon’s? Had he just driven right up there on the beach and left his boat for them to find? 

There was a lot about his plan that I didn’t know, but one of the big things I hadn’t known was how he planned to get on that island without the others noticing. Surely, if he’d been following them all this time, he would’ve been stealthier than to leave a boat on the beach next to theirs. Turning with my binoculars, I looked to see if I could find him sitting out on the open water the way we were . . . nope. Going back to the boats on the beach, I wondered what he was doing. Had he waited until they got here to let them know he was here too by pulling up right beside them? Not outside the realm of possibility, but I’d expect to see him on the beach with a broken neck if he had, because they couldn't be that far ahead of us, and I didn't think that Bonnie, Katherine, or Stefan would respond well to him showing up that way. Maybe he’d let them know he was around before they got here and talked his way onto their team?

Stefan and Bonnie hadn’t mentioned him being with them to Caroline, and they hadn’t texted her phone to say he'd joined them before I'd shut it off to get on the plane with Klaus or after we'd landed and I checked it before turning it off again in the taxi, so he might not have been with them then, but as the head of our covert operations, he could have found a way to be with them now. Maybe he’d made it seem like he showed up at the airport in Canada without expecting to see them there, or Katherine had finally outted him to the others to try and get him out of her way, and when they confronted him, he said he'd known where to be because Caroline found the sword, we'd deciphered the map, and I’d convinced Caroline to let him go, so he could get to the island where the cure was while I was detained? 

He would've known they had Caroline looking for the sword if he'd been listening in on what they were saying from a distance. If that’s what he did, then I bet if I had Caroline's phone on and reception now, I'd see some messages. I wonder what Damon said in that initial meeting to get Stefan to agree to him being here, because it had to have been Stefan who ultimately decided it. I couldn’t see Bonnie or Katherine agreeing to it, and none of that really explained why there were two boats.

Maybe he’d been reckless and careless and had put his boat next to theirs, but I had more faith in him than that. He had to be enjoying the thrill of the hunt. It’s the first one he’d been on in a while, and part of the thrill he'd get from that is the psychological aspects of a hunt that he must surely being getting from letting his prey see him, convincing his prey to bring him with them, and waiting for his moment to strike. Maybe Katherine was allowing it, because she didn't want him to out her, or he was letting her know when she wasn’t acting like Elena, which helped her get further in her journey than she would without him? That all kind of made sense, but something still felt off.

If Damon was there with them, then they all still should’ve been able to fit into a single boat. Could there be more than the 6 of them? Did they bring Matt? This was all a bit out of his league, but maybe. To find out anything that was more definitive about Damon’s plans, who was with them, what they were doing - I’d have to be a lot closer than I was right now. 

Klaus had cut the engine far enough away to keep any of them from hearing us . . . okay, so he’d probably be fine with driving this boat at full throttle towards the beach to make a big grand theatrical entrance that would scare the hell out of every last one of them. I was the one who had specifically requested that we cut the engine, so I could take the opportunity to spy on what we were heading into before we got there. This seemed to be the best side of the island to land on without a doubt. The other side seemed to be at a much higher elevation. I wondered if there was anywhere on that side to land at all or if it was all just a bunch of rocks. Hm. “I don’t think we should land here. I think we should go around to the back of the island.”

His attention had been alternating between me and the island, like he was entertained by the puzzle of trying to figure out what I was planning. Again, his attention flicked to me before it returned to the island. “Do you know if there’s a beach on the other side, or are you guessing?”

“I’m almost sure there isn’t, but according to the map and sword, Silas is on the far side of the island, and I’m pretty sure that the entire island is booby-trapped if the professor’s notes of his visit are to be believed. There are also guardians on that island whose sole purpose is to keep people from finding Silas . . . again if his notes are to be believed. He had to run from them apparently.”

“You read all that on the plane?” The ‘and are only saying that now,’ part was left unspoken, but heavily implied. 

“Taxi . . . wanna see?” 

I pulled the leather bound journal out of my bag and went to hand it to him, but he dismissed it saying. “The ravings of a madman.”

Taking a knee to be closer to his height, I argued, “Now you’re just being stubborn for the sake of it. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of making my case, and I think we should row around the island, because I don’t know how close their path might lead to the edge. I also don’t want to tip any of the guardians off that we’re here.” He seemed skeptical and was probably half a second away from rolling his eyes, so I added, “If you want to go up on that beach right now, be loud, boisterous, and all ‘rawr, I’m The Hybrid, bow down before me, and do what I say,’ then be my guest, but I think that’s a bad idea with Bonnie being here considering what she did to you at the house. The best approach for you is to approach this like a mere mortal.”

“And mere mortals row, do they?”

I smiled in spite of myself at his snarky attitude. He’d gotten ever so slightly more irritated the closer we got to this island, and I think it’s because he was just itching to take command of the mission. So far, he’d been an observer who pointed out where I’d made mistakes and had provided material assistance with things like the plane or the fuel for the boat, but I didn’t ask him to do those things. He’d convinced me to let him do them, because him doing them were his ticket here. “Well, this mere mortal likes to stay in the shadows and lie in wait for the right moment to strike when she knows where her prey will be.” Inhaling deeply through his nose, he looked at the island again. “I know it takes more patience than you probably have, and it goes against everything in you to not just take over right now, but aren’t you the one who said I know what I’m doing in a battle scenario?”

My eyebrows innocently arched, while I waited for his response, and he finally did roll his eyes before picking up the oars along one of the sides and handing me one. “I assume you know to do this, since you rowed yourself out into the middle of the lake.”

Sitting next to him, I put the paddle in the water and answered what had probably been a rhetorical question. “Yeah . . . but now I’m wondering with the difference in our strength levels, if we’ll just wind up going in circles.”

I thought my concern was a legitimate one, but when I looked at him over my shoulder, he appeared to be trying not to smile. “Let’s see, shall we?”

We didn’t necessarily go in a circle, but there was a large enough arch to our trajectory because of me. We got there as fast as we did because of Klaus. It was a pretty big island considering who was on it and how to find him were such tightly held secrets. It’d be dusk soon. If Shane found a way to tell them about the traps, and they walked and also stopped for the night to avoid the traps, then it’d take them at least a day to get to Silas. 

Then there was what I was proposing. There was nowhere to park the boat on the far side of the island. In fact, there wasn’t a beach of any kind, more like a sheer cliff-face. Grateful for the water and food I’d had, as well as the fact that I hadn’t had to row more than I did, I thought I might just about make it up the cliff, but I was going to need a massive break when I got to the top. Thankfully, by starting on this side of the island, I should have enough time to do that. 

As we neared a rock that jutted out of the water, I stood with my duffel bag and prepared to hop onto it, but the back of my sweatshirt was quickly grabbed before I could, and I was yanked back down into my seat. My head slowly turned in Klaus’s direction, my expression, a result of having been manhandled. As amusing as he clearly found it, he didn’t address it. “If you insist on going up this way, then give me the rope I saw in your bag, and I’ll pull you up.“

Guess it was time to pull out another one of his words. “No.” We might be heading into dusk, and it might take until it was dark for me to get up there, but I refused to do it the way he proposed. Besides, the rope i'd brought wasn’t anywhere near long enough. His eyebrows arched at my tone, and I said, “I am not a sack of potatoes. According to you, I am a hummingbird, so I will flit up there on my own merits, thank you very much.”

There was so much he wanted to say to that. He limited it to, “There won’t be much flitting, I can tell you that.” 

“Then so be it.” Again, I stood and carefully moved to the front of the boat. Placing my duffel bag over my shoulder, I reached down to grab the rope for the boat and hopped onto the jutting rock, so I could tie the boat to it. When I was done, I looked through the bag for the rope he’d seen, tied one end around my waist and the other around the strap of the bag. I was hoping that I could just let my bag dangle behind me, so I wouldn’t have to worry about it getting in my way. I also didn’t want it hanging so far behind me that it snagged on anything and impeded my climb, so I looped the rope around the strap enough times that the bag should fall somewhere just below my hips. When that was done, I removed the strap from over my head to test it, and it held. I took one last look back at Klaus. He was still sitting in the boat, and his face said that he was annoyed, but there was a growing intrigue there as well. He really didn’t think I could do it, did he? Guess I was just going to have to prove him wrong. 

I hopped from one rock to another. On the nearest rock to the cliff-face, I stopped again to pull my black leather gloves out of the pouch at the front of my sweatshirt. Ice forming under my hands on what were surely wet rocks just simply wouldn’t do. Now all that was really left was getting onto the bottom of the cliff in front of me without sliding back into the water under me. It wasn’t too far. The rock I was on was a little small, but I could almost reach the cliff from where I was without having to jump. 

Reaching out with my arm and leg, I managed to find a suitable hand and foot hold to grab onto, and then I was away. It was slow going. I refused to make the mistake of either looking up to see how far I had to go or down to see how far I might drop. I mainly focused on what was right in front of me to see where the next highest hand or toe hold would be.

At a certain point my muscles begin to ache, and the discomfort turned into an icy burn. I kept my breaths as steady as I could, but they were a little heavy and harsh. Sure, I could do with a break, but there was nowhere for me to have one, and there wasn’t time for one, because with the sun setting, it was getting harder to see, so I just continued on as best I could. I’m not sure how far I was - could’ve been halfway, two-thirds, maybe three quarters – I refused to find out, but I certainly did notice when I looked to my left for the next place to put my hand and saw Klaus beside me. Panting, I asked, “What are you doing?”

“I found myself wondering how it would be to do this the hard way, and why should you be the only one to feel that kind of exhilaration when you reach the top?”

It made me smile briefly. Of course it had nothing to do with him being able to catch me better from here than down where he’d been or up at the top where he obviously could be. If nothing else, it gave me even more motivation to keep going and push past the pain in my arms and legs if it meant I had to now keep up with him. It certainly made the rest of the journey feel a lot faster. He got to the top first and would have reached down to help me up if I hadn’t already gotten my forearms under me in the time before he turned back to help. With one last push, I finally made it and collapsed at the top with a small laugh. “Was it everything you’d hoped it’d be?”

“And more.”

Mindful of my bag, I rolled onto my back to look up at him. He wasn’t out of breath or sore in the slightest. I’d say that was easy for him, but he had looked like he was concentrating on the wall when he was looking for places to put his hands and feet. He seemed . . . relieved, like maybe an internal weight that’d been threatening to crush him since the night of Kol's death had been momentarily forgotten or held at bay, and that was without him having to kill anything to achieve it . . . okay, so maybe I was projecting a little, because that’s how I felt, but I was fairly certain that it was true of both of us to an extent. Overall, he seemed quite pleased, not just for himself, but both of us, I think. “Perfect teamwork as far as I’m concerned . . . and now I need a nap.”

His gaze flicked from the last dregs of the setting sun to me, and he chuckled. “We can find you somewhere better than right here on the ledge.” My arms and legs felt like jelly, but he made a valid point. Rolling back over, I pushed myself up to get to my knees and then eventually got to my feet. Should probably untie the duffel bag and put the rope away. It took me a minute, and then I was throwing the strap over my shoulder again. Ready to go, I went to head into the forest on the island, and Klaus said, “Would you not spare a moment to take in the view?” He wasn’t telling me to do it, more like asking why it hadn’t occurred to me to do it, but before I could respond, he answered for me. “You find it trivial as well.” I shrugged, like that was probably true, and he looked back out at the seas and the sky before saying, “I can assure you it is anything but . . . moments like this and views like that are what make life worth living.”

Yeah, no, I got that, particularly with Silas being buried on the island where we stood. It was important to remind yourself why you fought to live, and I was ecstatic about my minor victory of climbing the cliff, but what I found better than that achievement or the pink and purple hues of the sky, was this moment. His display of pure unadulterated humanity would stand out to me as more monumental than anything else. “You sound like Elijah. He once said that he’s met kings and queens, poets and musicians, but it’s the everyday moments that stand out, like the first time he heard a song or had a chat with someone that made him think of something he’d never thought, the sight of a friend . . . his family.”

Turning away from the view, Klaus muttered, “Yes, well, he sounds like a sentimental fool.” 

By extension, did that meant he felt like he was coming off as one as well? “I think it’s great.” He looked down at me, and I said, “And I think it’s telling that something visual stands out to you while something auditory would to him . . . you are an artist and he is a musician. It seems right.”

Walking with me away from the edge, he argued, “I like music too, you know.”

“Well, you’re not a complete monster, so I’m not surprised.” I briefly glanced at him, and he was again trying not to smile when I added, “But it isn’t your passion . . . and you were right. The view and the accomplishment warranted more time than I gave them. I just think that sleep might be a bit more appealing right now.”

Seizing on the opportunity he saw, Klaus coaxed, “Which means?”

“You were right about that too?” 

Grinning to himself, he said, “I may have spoken too soon. Perhaps it’s moments like these that give life meaning.”

“Well, the sun does go down once a day. You being right must almost never happen.”

“I think I will take that medal when all of this is over. I’ve more than earned one.”

“I’ll see what I can do about that.” He might have a participation medal coming his way in the very near future for having to deal with me.

I saw a place a little further in the woods and diverted my path. It wasn’t quite a cave, more like a slight overhang that would protect at the back and allow me a clear view of the sides and front without it being easy for anyone out there to see me. If it rained, the bit at the top should keep the worst of it away from me. It’d do as far as places to nap went. Taking a flashlight out of my bag, I grabbed a nearby stick and set about poking at the dead leaves that had collected under it. “I hardly think anyone has set up a trap there.”

“I’m checking for hibernating snakes. You may not have to worry about being bitten by a poisonous one, but I do.”

“There’s nothing there.” 

I glanced back at him to see how certain he was. Suppose he’d be able to hear the heartbeat of even a hibernating snake if one was present. With a slight nod, I tossed the stick aside and started to putting the leaves back into a pile. I didn’t intend to sleep for long, but I might as well go for as much comfort as possible. “I only need about 45 minutes. What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“If it’s only to be 45 minutes, I’d say a fire isn’t necessary, so I’ll most likely explore the area.”

Crawling onto my bed of leaves, I murmured, “Good idea. Traps will be harder to see at night. Make sure you don’t trip any,” before turning to press my back to the rock so I could be ready for anything that attacked me from the front.

With an expression and tone that dripped with sarcasm, he muttered, “I’ll keep that in mind,” but I ignored it while setting the alarm on my phone and then closed my eyes. When they opened again, it only felt like it was 5 minutes later, but I felt the phone buzz against my hand, and after looking at it, it would appear that I’d already hit snooze a couple of times. With a sigh, I forced myself to move and wished I hadn’t. My muscles had stiffened in my down time, maybe not as much as if I’d slept longer, but almost every single one of them burned. Well, I couldn’t allow them slow me down. I’d have to do something about them. A good stretch would help, so when I eventually got to my feet, I used the rock I’d crawled under to help me stretch my arms and back before doing a lot of intense stretches on my legs. 

Starting to feel better, I loosed them up a little more by jumping and jogging in place before shaking off what was left of the tension that remained. Testing myself, I did a quick cartwheel, and I was still just a little sore through my shoulders, but everything worked the way it should. I could live with that. Finally giving myself a chance to take in my surroundings, what stood out most was that it was pitch black and silent. If Klaus was around, I didn’t hear or see him. 

Maybe he was still exploring, or maybe he’d been caught in a trap. Maybe he’d just decided to go on without me. I decided to give him 5 minutes. Then I was going to go on without him. He wouldn’t be happy if he came back and saw that I was gone, because I hadn’t exactly given him a viable plan on what to do about Silas being able to mind control me, but I’d said I’d be out for 45 minutes, and it’d actually been closer to an hour. I’d taken more time on top of that to stretch, so he’d had time to come back if it’s what he was actually going to do. 

I spent the 5 minutes stretching before finally reaching down to grab my duffel bag and noticed something fall off it. Bringing out my flashlight again, I briefly flicked it on and saw a bottle of water and a packet of beef jerky. I could definitely use both right about now, but more importantly, seeing them made me think that Klaus had left them there, because he hadn’t intended to be back by the time I woke up, so I could go on ahead without him, and that worked for me. Might be better if I ate the jerky now, because surely the vampires in the group would be able to smell it if I had it near the cave. The water, though, I’d drink that when I got there. 

It took me a good bit of the night to make my way to where I was going. The nautical compass directions from the tattoo and sword when used with a modern day map got you to the island. Then from there, the directions from the tattoo and sword became more like what I suppose a real treasure map would be. Far side of the island, so many paces from this landmark or that one, and I had to keep my attention on the ground a lot of the time, because there were trip wires and covered pits everywhere. The sky was clear, and it was the night after a full moon, so I didn’t particularly need the flashlight for much, but occasionally, I did have to cover it with my hand while switching it on to make sure a trip wire was what I thought it was and not just a stick or that a patch of leaves that looked wrong were almost certainly covering a pit. As soon as I was sure, I’d switch it off again. I also had to be as quiet as possible so as not to alert the guardians of the island, and of course, I didn’t want to let the others know I was here either. 

Given all the limitations and the poor visibility it was a minor miracle that I made it. The mouth of the cave was somewhat hidden, but I was pretty sure that was it, and it looked anything but inviting. Exhaling a steadying breath, I noted the plume it made in the frozen air and inhaled deeply before forcing my feet to carry me forward. I got all of a foot closer before pausing. I knew that feeling. My head tilted to the side as I assessed it, and finally, I said, “Well, aren’t you a sneaky hybrid . . . what’d you think, that I was going to walk you into a trap on the way here or something?”

I heard his voice come from somewhere behind me. “One can never be too careful.”

“More like you got a bad case of ‘I need to run away from trusting someone,’ that’s always afflicting you . . . You weren’t there when I left. I’m sure of it, and you weren’t following me . . . Did you just find this place on your own and wait for me to show up to see if you were right?” Stepping up next to me, his focus stayed on the cave, and he nodded. “How’d you know this was the place?”

“It smells of death . . . It’s faint, but it’s there and human. This is where those miners and students died, isn’t it?”

“According to legend, they painted their blood on the walls. If they really did, that could be why you can still smell it."

"How does the legend go?"

"The one the professor wrote about in his journal says that they bled themselves dry in an effort to see dead loved ones, but since nobody survived to tell the tale, the only way the people who found them knew that was because the names written on the walls are of people they loved who died . . . That’s why the professor came here. He wanted to see his dead wife and son. It’s curious that after being here, he also used the same kind of manipulation to get the pastor to blow up most of the rest of the council - the promise of seeing his dead wife. It's almost like the idea wasn't his, but implanted in his mind as the path he should take when he left here.” Klaus looked down at me over shoulder, and I said, “It also just so happens to be where the map to find Silas leads, so . . . he is clever. It’s a hard weakness to overcome – missing a dead loved one.”

“And you think you can?”

“I don't think I'm going to take at face value that anything I see in there is real. Instincts, logic, reason . . . that’s how you get around the things he makes you see, and if he does more than that, then . . . I’m just not sure, but I’ll figure something out.”

“Well, if he needs blood, and that in any way makes him more powerful, I’d also suggest not bleeding inside that cave.”

I exhaled a laugh at the sincerity of his advice before looking up at him. “Are you finally coming around?”

“Let’s just say that you’ve somehow managed to make this feel like the most spectacular ghost story, and while I am only certain that the cure is in there and want it gone, I’m curious to see how it pans out.”

It wasn’t a complete acknowledgement, but it still made me feel like doing a happy dance, like a full-fledged, throw caution to the wind kind of happy dance, but this wasn’t the place or time for it. The most I allowed myself was a beaming smile and a little bobble on my heels as I stuffed my hands into the pouch on my sweatshirt. Not wanting to rub his face in it, I turned my attention back towards the cave, and my grin slowly dropped. I hadn’t done too good of a job conjuring up a ghost story, had I? “Okay, but just to be clear, you’re not going in there with me.”


	75. Locked Horns

It looked like I was right about us getting here a full day ahead of anyone else. There’d been a thorough investigation of the cave in the time since we arrived. The names in dried blood were on the walls the way I’d said they would be. The whole place was eerie, particularly near the well. It’s the place where the people had drained their blood, so I was sure that Silas must be desiccated under it. Klaus marginally mocked me for that until I pointed out a crack in the floor directly at the bottom of the well and dribbled some of the water from the bottle down it to see if he could hear it trickle down into a chamber or something below. 

His face said he heard something, and I was sure I had too, but he didn’t say anything. I told him that supposedly the lower chambers could only be opened with the spell embedded in Jeremy's tattoo, but if he wanted, he could try stomping us down there since he was an Original and all. If he did that, we got the cure, and poured it down Silas’s throat, then there’d be no need to wait for Bonnie to show up. He gave it a try. It made the entire cave shake. Rocks were dislodged and fell down around us, but the floor remained intact. Before he got too frustrated, or you know, buried us alive, I headed off to explore more of the cave in the hopes that he'd follow without me having to say something that would make his temper worse. It seemed to work. 

He's the one who found where the ritual would have to take place. There was a clearly defined circular shape in the floor, and it did have a ritualistic feel to it. Beyond that, there wasn’t much more that we could access, but we had a pretty good lay of the land for when the others got here. Didn’t see much point in hanging out in there after that, so I was outside studying how a trap I’d found had been made when I heard some crunching coming from deeper in the forest and quickly hid behind the tree I was near. I had no idea where Klaus was, but unlike most vampires, he was almost silent when he moved unless he wanted to be heard, so I knew it wasn’t him.

Circling around the tree as they got closer, I too was silent and made myself as invisible as possible. It looked like the front runners from the group were Professor Snake, Jeremy, Bonnie, and some guy I didn’t know. Was he one of the guardians? Well, if he was, he wasn’t doing a very good job of guarding the tomb. He seemed to be bringing them straight to it until he abruptly stopped. “This is as far as I go.”

Almost anyone would be able to see that he was clearly frightened of the place. Did the professor pick up on that? Nope. Pointing at the cave, he was all, “Silas, Silas, Silas,” and I had to fight hard not to laugh. I mean, I know he was probably trying to say something that was really important to him, and if he was anyone else, there’s no way I’d find his predicament funny, but things being what they were, I found amusement in it looking like he was excitedly telling the guy that's where Silas was, and the other guy’s face being like, ‘Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m not going in there.’ Finally, the professor gave up when the guy exhaled an exasperated sigh and said he just wanted to get payed. Opening his bag in disappointment, the professor started to pull – wait, that looked like the tombstone.

What Bonnie said matched pretty closely to what I was thinking. “That’s what the tombstone was for? To pay off a mercenary?”

The professor told her that it had powerful magic because of Qetsiyah’s blood being in it. Is that the only reason the witch who had brought them here, a witch who clearly knew about Silas and feared the guy, would need it? Could something about it be used against Silas? If that immortality spell was made by Qetsiyah, then was her blood in it to bind it together, like a doppelgangers blood was in other spells? Could a witch like Imelda find a way to use the blood in the stone to undo the immortality spell? Is that how the cure was made? Or was their witch guide not thinking about that at all? Was he just an unscrupulous witch who simply wanted the powerful magic inside that rock despite the consequences of him bringing those three here? I found myself questioning whether he deserved it if that was the case and wondered about the damage he might do if he kept it.

Hm. Silas. Random Witch. Big fish. Little fish holding big power in the rock in his hands and saying he’d pray for Jeremy and Bonnie’s souls. He obviously thought they were going to die or do something so egregious that it warranted him praying for their souls, and yet he still turned and left them behind. My eyes followed him as he headed back into the woods, and I decided that it’d take the other three more than a few minutes to get down the well and to the place where they had to do their ritual. I didn’t really want to be down there in the heart of the cave when they did it anyway after seeing how stable it was during all of Klaus’s stomping. Once the barriers to Silas were gone, then I could see about doing something about him, but this guy . . . this guy was right here in front of me free for the taking, so leaving my place behind the tree, I silently tracked him through the woods.

I had more than a few anti-witch darts on me considering I wanted to be prepared for all things witch in addition to all things vampire and just plain old fashioned bullets to put any immortal down for at least a few minutes, so as I crept quietly through the woods, I loaded one of my witch darts into the dart gun and made sure I stayed low to the ground as I moved. Having been here long enough to acquaint myself with the forest area around the cave certainly helped me stay away from any traps there might have been. His pace was fast at the start, like he was eager to get away from the cave, but as he got further away, it slowed somewhat, and I found myself in a good position to take my shot. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to take it.

Instead, I heard a twig snap from somewhere to the left and had to pivot behind the big tree next to me. He might’ve stopped to look in that direction, but I didn’t wait to see if he had. I had no idea how powerful he was, so I didn’t want to chance him catching a glimpse of me in his peripheral vision if he did look to his left. A moment later, there was a slight whistling sound followed by a grunt and then a thump and crunch as something heavy fell to the ground. Shit. Had one of those guardians just killed him?

I was going to chance a glance to confirm he was dead, but first and foremost, my attention needed to be over my right shoulder, so with my back to the tree, that’s where I looked. Nothing yet . . . nothing yet . . . footsteps, and as they moved closer to where the last place I’d seen the witch was, I moved around the tree to get a look from the other side. Goddamnit, Katherine! She went right for the tombstone and started to look around to see if anyone was watching her, so I ducked back behind the tree, but I had a strong inkling that her cautious act was for show, because I was fairly certain that she knew I was there. 

Bet her ears had perked up the same way mine had at what the professor had said about the power in the tombstone, which meant she had to have been close enough to hear it. I’d say great minds thought alike, but she definitely wanted the tombstone for entirely different reasons than I did. It was just another bargaining chip she might find useful down the road, not with Klaus, but presumably there were a lot of people out there who might want it and who would be willing to do favors for her to get it. She and I had come at the witch from different directions, so I doubt she’d seen me until we were both within range of the witch, but when she saw that I was about to take my shot, I bet she’d stepped on a twig knowing I’d take cover, and now she had the tombstone. 

That’s fine. I’d get it back off of her before we left this island. I’d do it now, but she’d be expecting it. Didn’t have a vervain dart loaded anyway. Hm . . . I hadn’t heard her move yet, not a step in any direction, not away from the body and in the opposite direction of the cave, not in the direction from where she’d obviously thrown something at the guy, not past me and my tree on her way to the cave. I didn’t feel her behind me yet, but I imagine that’s where she’d be heading when she, herself, figured out how she wanted to approach me being here in this little game of hide and seek we had going on, and when she did, she’d move fast, so I still wouldn’t hear her. 

Without taking my attention off the front of the tree where she and the presumably dead witch were, I stuck my arm behind me, so that my hand was palm out at roughly head height and only moments before a feminine face collided into it. It wasn’t a hard collision, I’d just gotten the distance she’d planned to be behind me right enough that we connected, and I looked behind me as I dropped my hand to find her putting her fangs away in what would almost look like bewilderment if she wasn’t such a master at hiding her real feelings. “Hi, Kat . . . How’s my favorite doppelganger doing?” That time, her confusion showed through for the briefest of moments before she could keep it from getting away from her, and I grinned. “What? Expecting a stake closer to this height maybe?” I put my hand at heart height, and she gave me a look that said she wasn’t amused.

“Is this what living with those idiots has reduced you to now - childish antics?”

I’d say she was annoyed that I’d pointed out that I could’ve killed her just now if I’d wanted, but her disappointment in me not at least attempting to do that seemed genuine, and a few seconds later it was my face that flashed a blink and you’d miss it look of puzzlement. “You say childish antics. I say I’ve always been brains over brawn.” I mean, she had to know that I was simply diffusing the situation until I could figure out what to do about it. “Unless you’ve been away so long this time that you’ve actually started to buy into the hype that you’ve been spinning out there about the Phantom Huntress. Imagine she's starting to sound pretty scary now.” 

Her mouth opened to say she’d done nothing of the sort, and my eyebrows arched, like I knew I was right, so she shouldn’t even bother. Sighing, she let her shoulders fall before regaining her composure and taking up one of her more haughty looks as she mused, “What’s the point of getting in at the ground floor on the next big thing if I can’t capitalize on it when it’s fully matured . . . and if I’m not mistaken, you’ve done more than your fair share to perpetuate the myth yourself just by being you. Vampires by the scores. Check. Werewolf packs. Check. Hybrid packs. Check. You’ve even branched out into witches now from what I hear. I presume that if today doesn’t go as you want, you’ll be the one who gets Silas too . . . Am I missing any?”

With a grumble, I said, “You can check revenants and an original vampire that Esther made to kill her children off too.” 

“Well, then you can hardly blame me for giving you the credit you deserve when you don’t give it to yourself . . . although I’m beginning to wonder if you deserve quite so much of it since your baby vampire twin, her dopey brother, and her witch sidekick handed you what must have been your worst defeat to date.”

“Mmhm . . . Hey, I know pretty much all you know how to do is run, but, uh . . . would me not going back after all this be seen as running and weak, or should I go back, finish out the school year so I can walk across that stage, tell all of them to go fuck themselves, and then get on with the rest of my life?” 

She snorted before looking up as she considered the choices. “Points for the insult . . . Maybe my niece really is still in there somewhere.” Looking back down at me with an assured nod, she added, “It has to be option B. Get what you want out of life first, and make them love you before you go just to drive the knife a little deeper when you do.”

Well, all right. I dipped my head to let her know I’d consider it, and almost immediately after that said, “So before you use this little heart-to-heart to do something conniving to get back to the cave first, you should probably know that Klaus is here too.”

Her head immediately whipped from side to side out of habit more than anything to make sure he wasn’t somewhere nearby, and when her eyes came back to me, she took an aggressive step forward whispering, “They may not have ruined you yet, but you’ve definitely lost a step if you let him follow you!”

“Uh, I wouldn’t call it letting him follow me. It was more like I brought him.”

With a look full of disgust, she spat out, “Then maybe they were right about you. You really have lost your mind if you thought bringing him here was a good idea.”

I hadn’t thought it was a good idea, but I was starting to see the perks of him being here now. “Yeah, see, if I were you, it wouldn’t make sense for me to bring him, but since I’m not . . . “ I’d still be driving in the middle of nowhere Canada on my way here right now if not for Klaus. “And, you know, when I was stuck in that house, it made sense for you to be here if it meant they didn’t get the cure, but now that I’m not in that house anymore, his interests actually align with mine a bit better than yours do, and really isn’t that something that you could respect on some level, Kat?”

Her eyes narrowed, and she held the glare for a few seconds before looking to the side with a shake of her head. “Fair enough.” Sighing in resignation she added, “I guess I’ll just have to get the cure before he does.”

“You have to know that’s a bad idea. It’s way too reminiscent of when you stole the moonstone from him, and if you then try to leverage it? He will see it less as a gift and more as you trying to strong arm him into doing what you want. You’ll completely undo the agreement he’s already made. Might as well cut your losses now and enjoy the boat ride back. At least you won’t be running for your life.”

“You seriously expect me to give up the first time you say ‘check’? Is that what you would do?” Appraising me, she said, “Of course not, or you wouldn’t be here. It’s not over until it’s checkmate, and you know it . . . I’ll just have to give him the cure and another peace offering on top of it - something he’ll want almost as much. Then I’ll be able to come and go to see my Niece any time I please . . . Where’d you leave him? By the cave, I’m guessing.”

That other thing she’d be willing to trade wouldn’t be Jeremy’s life, would it? Well, if it wasn’t, then it was probably best not to bring it up as an option. “He’s been hanging out with me at the cave off and on, so he might be there. He might not be. The only place I’m sure he isn’t, is here, or you and I wouldn’t be having this chat.”

“Maybe he saw his sister and decided to keep her from making the biggest mistake of her life.”

So, they did have at least one extra person if Rebekah was here. It wasn’t all that surprising now that I knew it was her. It just meant that she was desperate enough to be cured that she’d found a way to be here despite the others killing her brother, and as much as he annoyed me, and despite me consistently poking holes in the nice guy act he so desperately wanted himself and everyone else to believe - Stefan actually wasn’t heartless. I could see him bringing her if he knew it meant that much to her . . . just not if he knew there was only one dose of the cure. What I found more intriguing than that wasn’t the derisive judgement Katherine’s expression and tone held for Rebekah’s dreams, but the fact that she’d brought Rebekah up at all. 

There’d really been no need for it. Either she was venting her frustration to make me drop my guard, so she could make her move, or the last few days of having to be on her best behavior as an undercover Elena had really taken something of a toll on her. Maybe there was something there that I could use to get her to leave without going after that cure. “Not a fan?”

“Ugh, she’s such a pampered prima donna, and the way she hangs on Stefan is – “ 

She stopped herself there, either because she realized how it sounded for her to be saying it, or to bait me into a sympathetic response that she’d use to knock me upside the head when I least expected it. I used it to push on with my agenda instead. “You know, I could help you with that . . . In fact, he's latched onto her, at least in part, because I threatened to set you two up.”

Looking at her cuticles with a slight frown, he muttered, “And who says I want to be with someone who sees being with me as a threat?”

“He might, but I think it’s curious that he was so desperate for me to not even put a call in to you about it that he almost immediately got with her. What’s he got to be afraid of from one teeny tiny phone call . . . unless it’s that he knows that eventually, he’d let you in again, because let’s face it, you’re the reason he was drawn to Elena in the first place, so there’s obviously still something there, and sure, he might be with Rebekah for now, but that makes her his rebound. Better she than you for that, right?” 

The corners or her mouth curled up in a wry smile. “Well, I can see that someone has been spending far too much time around Klaus.”

Like she wouldn’t try to use Damon against me just the same. “I’d imagine that it’s a play I’d find in your book as well.” Her expression said she’d agree with that, so I said, “I suppose the obvious thing for me to point out is that I could act as a somewhat less wicked wing woman to help you win him back . . . providing you don’t do so much damage that can’t be undone that there’s really no coming back from it.”

“So, if Stefan’s the carrot to entice me away from the cure, then Klaus is the stick to keep me away from it, but in order for the carrot to work, I have to be able to attain the reward when we get off this island, and that will never happen as long Klaus is in the picture.”

Well, if there was nothing that would make her change her mind, then there’s really only one way this could go if I wanted to out maneuver her. “I’m working on that.” Her eyebrows arched dubiously, and I said, “Okay, not at present, but overall, I am. He may not honor any kind of deal for the cure, but I think I can eventually talk him into not killing you if he sees you . . . His hang ups at the moment seem to be having to see you around him all the time and – “ I cut myself off knowing that she’d be able to infer an approximation of what I’d been about to say and to make her think it wasn’t something I wanted her to know. I’d rather take the hit this path led down than for her to use Jeremy to try and garner Klaus’s approval. 

“And what?” 

“Nothing.”

“It really is quite pathetic that your attempts at outright lying haven’t gotten better.” You know, they probably hadn’t, but maybe it was time to start using that to my advantage. The trap had been set. Would she take the bait? Her eyes narrowed in thought before she quickly looked at me, like she had the answer. “I knew he’d find something about you that reminded him of himself, and you’d win him over, but you’ve exceeded my expectations, Little Niece . . . He’s jealous, isn’t he? He doesn’t want shared custody. He wants you all to himself.”

Now to attempt what needed to be one of the better performances of my life. “Um . . . Shit.” After a frustrated sigh, I asked, “So, how do you want to do this? Stake me with a stick to incapacitate me, so I can’t keep you from getting to the cave? The scent of my blood might be enough to draw him away from the cave if he’s there or really just about anywhere near here. It’d allow you to procure your absolute freedom by proving that I mean nothing to you, so he gets the cure with the added bonus being me, right?”

With a slight pout, she answered, “It’s much less fun when you call it out like that.”

“Why the hell do you think I said it?!”

“You’re getting testy again.”

Not really. “As well I think I should . . . You really are a pain in the ass, Katherine. Go on and do whatever you’re gonna do, so we can get to the part where I ultimately win.”

“Really? You had to throw giving me permission in there too?”

“Yep.” I had to get her to do it while making her think it’s not what I wanted her to do, and to make her think it’s not what I wanted her to do, I had to steal her thunder by telling her what she was going to do before she did it, like it was my idea, and giving her permission to do it, because that'd make her less inclined to want to do it. We'd both been trying to figure out what our next move should be from the moment that we’d essentially locked horns. The problem was in finding the best way to untangle them, so we could both go on our merry ways and continue plotting against one another, and I’d been through all the different scenarios. This was the best option for both of us. 

The worst options would be for either of us to kill the other. I didn’t want to kill her, and I’d just given her a pretty damn good reason not to kill me if it meant giving Klaus another reason not to take her stupid offer of the cure for her freedom. The next worst option for her would be for her to take off at full vampire speed with me chasing after her. She’d get back to the cave first, but I wouldn’t be too terribly far behind, and again, I’d just given her a reason not to do that if Klaus was there and saw her. Her staking me was really the best option for her because of the reason I had given her. You’d think my best option would be to find a way to jab her with some vervain to put her down long enough to get back to the cave and do what needed to be done before she woke up, but I knew she had a tendency to build up something of a vervain tolerance whenever she could, so she wouldn’t be down for as long as I needed her to be down, which meant that she’d find a way to catch me at the worst time, steal the cure, and take off with the prize.

If she staked me though, she didn’t know that I had both vampire blood capsules and the capsules that Imelda had made in my pocket, because there’s no way the girl she knew from a year ago would have had either on her. That meant that she would think I’d be down for longer than I would be, and I’d be able to catch up to her in the cave without her thinking I’d be there, put her down with vervain to steal the cure that she would have taken by then, and use it on Silas or be gone before she woke up. If I’d stayed near the cave, I would’ve gone in behind her anyway, because getting to the cave before all of them was really all about reconnaissance and securing the position I wanted to be in when it came to entering that cave at the end of the race, and the best position to win from was third place behind Bonnie and Jeremy in first, and her in second. 

Unsure of what I was doing, but knowing that I was up to something, she again looked to the side with a slight shake of her head. “You’ve certainly improved on your ability to play mind games.” That’s true. I probably had picked up a thing or two in the last year. I certainly wasn’t the same girl she’d staked in my apartment. “What if I told you that when I finally found an opportunity to get away from the rest of them last night, I saw something happen to Damon?” 

I’d say she didn’t want to play into my hands without knowing the cards I had up my sleeve, so she was using one of hers. My expression said as much, and she added, “A hunter took him. I think it may have been one of The Five. He was too fast to be a normal human. Now that Jeremy’s tattoo was completed, they all must’ve had them completed, and it’s bringing them here, like a homing beacon. You could use the opportunity to add one of them to your list and save your boyfriend . . . if he’s even still alive.”

If that had really happened, then I was pretty sure that Damon was still alive, and that’s if it happened. I’d add saving him to the list of things that needed to be done once I’d dealt with Silas if it’s what Damon needed, but again, I had to rely on my blue-eyed angel of death to be okay until I got to him and saw how he was for myself. When I did, I didn’t plan on letting him out of my sight for the foreseeable future. “If the hunter didn’t kill him right then and there, then he probably needs him for something. They have this supernatural need to kill any vampire they see, so he wouldn’t have left him alive for no reason.” 

Her eyebrows arched, before she said, “And Damon’s annoying at the best of times, so the hunter’s probably enjoying torturing whatever he wants to know out of him as we speak.” She flicked her hand in the direction of the rest of the island, like she was shooing a fly away and added, “So, run along and get to saving your amour.”

“What, you seriously expect me to go skipping through the woods to save Damon right now? As if I’m that flighty, particularly on a job, and the second I did turn my back, you’d probably stab me in it anyway.”

With a shrug, she countered, “Suit yourself. I totally understand if you don’t really care what happens to Damon.”

“Oh, Kat . . . With all your snooping, surely you’ve heard, I’m officially nominated for worst girlfriend in the world. We could be up there on that podium together for a change.”

At that, I saw a touch of the real Katherine for the briefest of moments as she fought a closed mouth smile and said, “I always have enjoyed our little chats . . . It does make me wonder what use you’d be in helping me obtain Stefan though.”

“If nothing else, I’m sure I’d make you look great to him in comparison.” Her smile grew a little more, and I knew I had to get this show on the road. The time it would’ve taken the other three to find where they needed to do the ritual must be nearly up, and I needed to factor in how long I was going to need to recover from whatever she did to me, so I made my move to force her hand. Snapping to attention, my posture went ramrod straight, and my eyes widened as I looked over her shoulder. I took a step forward, like I was going to pull her closer while I rushed out, “Klaus, wait!”

It might have been the equivalent of pointing behind her and saying, ‘Look!’ or ‘What’s that?’ but it worked, because I caught her when her guard was marginally down, and like she said, there’s power in a name when it’s backed up with powerful actions. The second she looked behind her, I lifted my dart gun and shot her in the ass. It was a dart meant for witches, so it wouldn’t do anything to her, but she didn’t know that. When she saw Klaus wasn’t there and felt the sting of the dart, she reached down, pulled it out, and threw it to the side as she turned back to me with an indignant look. Less than a second later, I found myself slammed up against the tree in a hold that reminded me of the one Elena had used with her forearm across my upper chest as she ripped the gun out of my hand and threw it to the ground. “You think one dart is enough?”

“How about 3?” 

Realizing her mistake in being so close to me and leaving herself wide open for whatever I had in my pockets, she immediately let me go and blurred a few feet back from where she’d started. “Is this how it’s going to be?” Smoothing her hand over her butt, like she was trying to soothe a hurt she couldn’t possibly still feel, she muttered, “That wasn’t even vervain was it? . . . I think we’re done here.” 

She left in a blur, and I was momentarily stumped. I looked around me to see if she’d circled around to a place I wasn’t looking, and it looked like she’d really just done a runner, but that was her second worst option considering neither one of us really had any idea where Klaus was, and I’m pretty sure that neither one of us wanted her running into him. “Aw, come on, Kat! I know the stakes are high, but don’t tell me you’ve gone soft and have your feelings hurt over a little friendly competition.”

I went to kick a leaf in frustration and planned to take off after her if she wasn’t back in the next couple of seconds, but felt a presence behind me and turned in time to catch a small tree branch right in the stomach. It went in, through me, out the other side, and a moment later had me pinned against the tree, and yes, it hurt a hell of lot, so much so that I was having a little trouble getting any air into my lungs let alone finding a way to say any words. Tutting, she pulled my hair back from my face and said, “You know me better than that. I’m not going to hold it against you. Now, I have a race to win, and you were right, this really is the best way to draw him away from the cave if that’s where he is, but it’s worth remembering who he really is. If his enemies know you can be used against him, he’s likely to kill you himself to prove that you can’t be, so use that brain of yours to figure out a way to spin this so that doesn’t happen, and I’ll see you again soon if all goes to plan.”

She was gone in a blurry flash of colors a moment later, and half a minute after that, I finally inhaled a ragged breath that’d been knocked out of me by the force of the blow. If she’d stuck around, she might have caught the bloody laugh I exhaled almost immediately after that. Thank god, I’d turned to face her, because it would’ve been a hell of a lot more difficult to get off this branch if it’d gone in through the back and my front had been pinned to the tree. Wrapping my hands, around the branch, I forced myself to take a few shallow breaths before gripping it tightly and attempting to yank it out with all my might. Easier said than done, because it was pretty embedded in that tree behind me. Well, if that wouldn’t work, then I was just going to have to hold onto the stick, and 1, 2, 3 - I wretched myself as hard as I could to the right until I felt the branch snap against the tree, and fell to the ground with a pain-filled screech. It took me another half a minute to get my breathing under control, and I could definitely feel myself going into shock already from the physical trauma. I was gonna have to be fast once I pulled the stick out, because it was at least marginally keeping me from bleeding out.

Another slow count of 1, 2, 3, and I pulled as fast and as hard as I could until I was free of the branch. My hands were slick with blood, but I reached into my pockets for the vampire blood capsules and Imelda’s pills and flipped the caps off of both bottles before tossing back a couple of the ones Imelda had given me. I washed them down by squeezing the contents out of the ones Damon had given me. As much as I hated it, I needed a direct shot of blood this time. I couldn’t afford to wait until the capsules dissolved in my stomach. I could’ve just gone with using them instead of the ones Imelda had given me too, but the good thing I’d found about Imelda’s pills was that they actually worked pretty well as far as pain relief went, so once they kicked in, I should still be able to move around as well as I normally could without the tiredness and soreness that came with blood loss, which took vampire blood a little longer to fix. 

As soon as I swallowed the frozen magic cocktail down, I laid my head back on the ground and watched the sky above me spin. It mostly made me feel sick, and I didn’t not want to vomit up what I’d just taken, so instead of focusing on the sky or letting myself sleep, which my body really wanted me to do, I concentrated on feeling my way around the bottles until I had the caps back on, and then on getting the bottles safely back in my pockets. Should’ve left plenty of blood here for a vampire or hybrid to find anyway. Klaus not being near the cave to run into Silas worked in my favor just as much as it did Katherine’s. Now, I just had to get up and get to that cave. I wasn’t ready yet. The vampire blood had closed the wounds, I knew that, but the blood loss and some of the internal damage that I’d probably caused myself by breaking the branch off at the tree had taken a toll. Imelda’s pills hadn’t kicked in yet, but if I was anything, it was willful, so that was gonna have to be how I got moving at first until they did.


	76. Silas

By the time I got back to the cave, I’d felt the earth shake at least once and figured that was Bonnie’s doing rather than any symptoms I might be experiencing from what’d happened out in the woods. I was still no faster than a comfortable jog, but I wasn’t that bad. Sprinting would be at least another 10 minutes away unless I was as good as I was going to get with the number of capsules I'd had. Taking what Klaus had said about me needing to be at my best to heart, I paused long enough to pop another couple of Imelda’s capsules at the entrance to be on the safe side and thought that maybe I should talk to her soon about getting some more of them, because I wanted to make sure I had enough to help her out if I came across her when she was in trouble again. That was sort of the whole reason she’d given them to me. 

Once inside the cave, I stopped at where I’d stowed a few of my weapons. Since Katherine had crushed my other dart gun, I got my favorite one out of a crack in one of the walls. It was the one that would take multiple darts and save me from having to re-load. I loaded it with vervain darts and tucked it into the back of my cargo pants before moving a little further into the cave to grab my favorite handgun, the same HK P30 that I’d used the night I’d gone after Klaus’s hybrids. I wasn’t sure how smart it was to fire it in here. I didn’t think it’d cause a cave-in or anything, although with Bonnie’s spell most likely causing the rumble I’d felt outside, it was possible. 

I was more concerned about damaging my hearing with the echo, but that’s also why I had a couple of cheap earplugs if I needed them. I’d still be able to hear my surroundings for the most part. They’d just be a bit muffled, so I should be okay, and going with a louder weapon would definitely give me an edge over anyone with supernatural hearing in here. I didn’t particularly think that I had to worry too much about ricocheting being a problem in here as long as hit my target, and I had some daggers, knives, and stakes on me too, so if going into stealth mode was warranted over a louder, faster approach, I could. 

That’s it. That’s pretty much all I was bringing with me. Anything else I might need, like extra ammo or explosives, were stuffed in various places along the way in the event that I needed them. Taking a moment to put the earplugs in, I made sure they didn’t obscure my hearing too much, and then ran to the well. No need to use my own rope. The professor and the two with him seemed to have already taken care of it, so putting on my gloves, I shimmied down the rope in what felt like it could’ve been record time. Maybe those pills were kicking in, or maybe it was just my adrenaline. 

When I got to the bottom of the well, I went to where the ritual would’ve needed to be done and briefly paused when I heard a muffled, “Silas! Silas!” Stopping, I looked to the side, and . . . yeah, that’s why I hadn’t wanted to be down here when Bonnie did that spell. Even from here and in the relative dark, the professor looked like he was in bad shape. I tossed a reluctant look down a new corridor that hadn’t been there any of the other times I’d been in this cave and then back down at the man responsible for all of this. I understood why he did what he did, but that didn’t make him brainwashing the pastor into killing all those people okay. I could leave him, but that wouldn’t make me any better than him. I just couldn’t afford to stop for long. Going over to him, I saw the pool of blood seeping out of his leg and pulled my sweatshirt off over my head. 

I didn’t want my blood on the shirt mixing with his and infecting him with my curse or anything. A guy like that with a curse like this was not a good idea. Using the Bowie knife in the sheath around my ankle, I cut the hood into a couple of strips of cloth that I could tie together to make one long strip and then crouched down to tie a tourniquet around his leg before taking a look at the rock that was pinning his leg to the ground. I pushed against it, and yeah, there’s no way I was moving that on my own. “You can either wait for a vampire to move this . . . assuming any of them think you’re worth saving, or I’ve got a hatchet and my new machete stashed around here somewhere. I could cut the leg off and give you some pills that’ll heal you before you bleed out.” He rapidly shook his head, and I said, “Or you can wait until I kill Silas and have more time to figure out what to do to get that rock off.”

Looking close to tears, he slowly shook his head simpering, “Silas . . . Silas,” like he thought I was about to kill his wife and child all over again and was broken and begging for their lives. 

“Look, Silas isn’t gonna be bringing them back. It doesn’t matter if I kill him or he kills all of us. I think your son found peace straight away, because he was an innocent, and when your wife died, she found peace with him . . . They’re not on the Other Side where all the other dead supernatural beings go, or the witches I’m sure you went to would have been able to get in touch with one or both of them . . . You need to let them go and do what you can to start trying to atone for the things you’ve done . . . and if you see your wife again or your son, they won’t really be them. They’ll be Silas messing with you head. He can read your thoughts, so he knows how they look because of that, and he came to you looking like them, telling you things about them that nobody but you would know or by having them say things that you wish they would have, so he could manipulate you into helping him get out of here, but would your wife or son have ever really told you to do the things you did, and if they wouldn’t have, then shame on you for believing in a bastardized, vile version of them that he created in their image. I can think of no worse way to honor them.”

Well, would you look at that. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that some of that might’ve actually gotten through to him. Maybe the pain in his leg along with the words I’d said had temporarily overridden Silas’s mind-fuckery? If things didn’t work the way I wanted, and Silas got out for whatever reason, that might be something to keep in mind . . . providing this wasn’t some sort of an act on the professor’s part. He was looking at me with widened, teary eyes, and seemed a little shell-shocked, so I didn’t actually think he was faking what appeared to be an awakening of sorts, and it weirded me out a little. “Okay, well, I’m gonna leave you to think on that for a bit. I’ve got places to be, people to kill . . . I’ll swing back around to help you with the rock if I make it out.” 

Getting to my feet, I gave him a light clap on the shoulder to make sure he knew I meant that, and turned to walk away, but he grabbed my forearm. I looked back at him ready to react with violence. I think my other hand had even balled into a fist, but he hissed out a, “Sssssssssss . . . “ 

He was really struggling with it, but it seemed important to him, and that’s the only reason I was giving him to the count of 5. If he was anyone else, I’d feel some sympathy for him, but as it was, I rolled my eyes when I got to three. “Come on Professor Snake, I don’t have all day.” 

“Ssssss . . . ooorrry . . . Sssssooorrry.”

My eyebrows arched in surprise, and he let me go. “Well, you’re gonna have to do a lot more than that, but it’s a good first step.”

Leaning his head against the cave behind him after the exertion, he looked up at me with an expression that said, he was tired, contrite, and maybe remembering his real wife and son, because there were little flashes of pain that I saw here and there that would indicate he was reconciling what Silas had said wearing their faces and what he knew to be true about the ones he loved. “Keep doing that . . . Keep remembering them, the real them, and maybe you’ll push him out.”

I got a subtle nod from him, and turned to make my way through the tunnel. I didn’t know the lay of the land, so I followed it until I got to a fork, and if I was right about Silas being under the well, then the tunnel that lead back around to the well is the one I should take. It was dark, obviously, and I didn’t want to tip anyone off that I was there, but I figured I’d get where I needed to be a little faster if I covered the light from my phone with my thumb and lit up the foot or two in front of me. I was getting close to where I thought I’d need to be, turned the light off before turning on the recording, and put my phone in the top pocket of my flannel shirt for safe keeping. I had said that if Klaus wasn’t here, then I’d record what I found to prove that Silas was real. Elena would live, and Klaus would have no reason to be upset with me for not handing the cure over to him when he saw it being used on Silas. 

Not more than a few seconds later, I rounded a bend and saw some lights coming from around a corner up ahead. My footsteps got lighter as my pace quickened. Unless she’d gone straight back at the fork in the tunnel and had waited for me to go past, Katherine should be in there right now with Bonnie and Jeremy. I was a few feet away, and almost on cue, I heard a male voice start wailing and knew immediately that it was my cousin. That couldn't be good. I got to what appeared to be an entryway, had all of a microsecond to take everything that was happening in that cavern in - no sign of Bonnie, Jeremy being held down against some kind of alter by something that had a tight grip on him, and Katherine’s back as she lunged forward to grab what looked like a box on the altar - and darted across the entryway to the opposite side where it was dark. 

Katherine had obviously been going for what she thought was the cure. Once she had it, she’d take off at a vampire sprint out of there, and from what I’d seen, there was only one way in or out of that room. I only had to wait about a second before I felt a strong breeze go by me, and lifting my dart gun, aimed at roughly where I thought she should be in the tunnel. She’d seemed apprehensive about 3 darts, so I went with 4 fired in rapid succession, although she seemed to slow down at about 2, and then without waiting to see if she’d fallen, I rushed into the cavern. 

Okay . . . Fuck. That wasn’t just some altar. It was a moving, stony man-shaped, one. Double fuck. “Jeremy, calm down.“ If he didn’t have a weapon on him, then panicking and pumping his blood out faster was not something he wanted to do. I couldn’t shoot any of the vital areas of the moving statue from where I was, because Jeremy was in the way, so I had a dagger out ready to pry that hand off of him and was halfway across what really wasn’t a very large cavern when the hand around Jeremy’s neck suddenly wrenched the kid’s head to the left with a quick flick of the wrist, and I stopped dead in my tracks. Jeremy’s body went limp, and the hand discarded him, like he was a partially empty carton of litter being carelessly discarded onto the ground. It would’ve been worse if I'd been able to hear the full crunch of a broken neck, I’m sure. As it was, I might have exhaled a squeaky gasp of defeat when it happened, but then I had to stow what I’d just seen, how I felt about it, what I thought about it, and what the ramifications were going to be, so I could get on with the task at hand.

First things first - for the statue man, who I knew full well was Silas, to have simply snapped Jeremy’s neck with one hand and so quickly, he had to have some enhanced strength even if it wasn’t up to par with an Original's. That seemed important to know. He started to sit up from the stone slab that’d been his resting place for thousands of years, and I took a step forward, but briefly paused when the world went blurry. Side-effect of the blood loss? Maybe, except I’d never felt anything like it . . . It was accompanied by an instant migraine so intense that I felt something start dribbling down my nose no more than a second after it started and knew that it was most likely blood. It was him, wasn’t it? How I was keeping him out, I didn’t know, but I didn’t see anything I shouldn’t be seeing. I wasn’t thinking anything I shouldn’t be thinking. I was all me inside my head. “Stop trying to get into my fucking head!” 

Either he was surprised enough by my outburst that it caused him to pause in his efforts, or my outburst had some other effect, but almost as soon as I said it, my vision cleared, and the pain subsided, so I pushed forward with the few feet I needed to get to him and plunged the dagger into what should be his heart. Not so stony now that he’d gotten a hit of blood from Jeremy, but still solid enough that I had to use both hands. As he fell back and his arms went limp, I took a step back and lifted my hand to my upper lip to be sure, and yeah, it was blood. Tossing his body a look, I muttered, “Welcome back to the land of the living, dickhead. Let’s see how long that holds you.” Hopefully, as long as an Original stayed down when they were staked in the heart with normal wood, but who knew with him? I turned, so I could go get the cure from Katherine while Silas was down, and paused when I saw a small body on the ground that had been obscured by the rock wall next to her. “Bonnie?”

She was blinking, so she was alive, but she looked rough. Her head had been bashed against the cave - by Katherine I’m guessing. She seemed stunned and out of it, but had maybe been with it enough to have registered what just happened to Jeremy, and she had a perfect view from here to have seen it all. It was probably adding to the shock she had going on from the head wound. Short rapid breaths, pale . . . there’s nothing I could do about the mental trauma, but I could help with the physical. 

Reaching into one of the pockets in my cargo pants, I pulled Imelda’s bottle out, popped the cap, and shook a couple capsules out into my hand before crouching down in front of her. “Here . . . Imelda made these. They actually work pretty well, but I don’t have any water.” I held them out in her direction, and when she didn’t take them, I grabbed her hand to placed them into her palm before gently pushing her hand towards her face. “Take them . . . If ever there was a time you needed to think clearly, this is it. I don’t know how long he’s gonna be down, but you need to get out of here before he wakes up, and the fastest way for you to do that is to take these.”

Ignoring me, her eyes stayed glued to the body on the ground behind me, short gasps of air interrupted her attempt to speak. “J – J – Jer – “

“I know.” Moving my body to block her view, I dipped down to catch her eyes, and when I had, said, “I won’t leave him behind, but I need to get you out of here first. If you take these capsules now, it’ll be a few minutes before they start kicking in, and that isn’t time we have, so as soon as you swallow them, you’re gonna have to get to your feet whether you’re ready to do it or not.”

“El – El – ena.”

I didn’t know if she was asking if I was Elena or if she was saying that Elena was going to be heartbroken or if she was trying to warn me that Katherine had been Elena, so I opted for an answer that I hoped would give her some kind of peace. “Elena’s been with me in her house the whole time. She’s still in Mystic Falls, so she’s safe. We’re not . . . I need you to take these, so you can get out of here. We can discuss everything that’s happened when this is over, and in the meantime, start trying to steady your mind to tame that Expression beast, or there’s a good chance there will be more deaths on this island today.”

“J – Jer – emy.”

“I know, Bonnie . . . I know. Let’s worry about the living first, and then we’ll deal with it, okay?”

Again, I gently lifted her hand towards her mouth, and this time, she shakily looked down at her palm, like she was only realizing for the first time that I had put something in it. I quickly reiterated, “They’re Imelda’s healing capsules. 100% witch approved and Eve tested for efficacy. I promise they’ll help with what must be a killer headache.” Her eyes darted back to me, and I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring nod. I wasn’t trying to poison her. They were safe for her to take. Finally, she lifted her hand to her mouth, and tipped her head back. I think it might’ve taken her a couple of attempts to actually get them down, but when I was sure she had, I got to my feet and held my hand down for her to take. 

She mostly just stared at it, and not wanting to waste any more time, I dipped back down to pull her up into a seated position before wrapping my arm around her waist and draping her arm over my shoulders. Holding onto her hand to keep her with me, I pushed us both up using my legs and looked at her to make sure she hadn’t passed out from the rapid movement when I was done. She was still mostly out of it, but I could tell she was starting to turn her head to look for Jeremy, so turning her away from him, I walked her with me towards the entrance to the cavern, and a few moments later, she asked, “Eve?”

“Yeah?”

“How’d you get here?”

“Uh . . . car, plane, and boat.”

“You’re really here right now?”

“Yep.”

“Like here, here, not like Grams was?”

“Uh . . . “ I looked at her and tried to work out what she meant. “I take it you’ve seen her since you’ve been down here?” 

She gave me an exaggerated nod before adding a disappointed, “She wasn’t real though. Jeremy couldn’t see her.”

I guess that meant that someone had bled over the well when they were coming down here, because Klaus and I hadn’t seen anything to indicate that the ghosts of dead loved ones were something that Silas could create without being powered by blood, so I’d been wrong about him being able to do it while desiccated, which meant he had to have gotten blood from someone else before Jeremy. “Did one of you get hurt on your way down the well?” 

Another drunken nod, and she answered, “I fell.” 

Guess she did have a bandage on her other hand now that I looked. “That’s how you hurt your hand?” She nodded again, and I said, “Well, the pills you took should help with that too, and I don’t really have any way to prove that I’m really me right now, but I am . . . Wait. Am I making you feel cold . . . colder than being in a cave should make you feel? If I am, that’s a dead giveaway that I’m me.” Coming out of the cavern, I turned left and saw Katherine face down in the tunnel about 20 yards away. Nodding towards her, I added, “And that’s Katherine. Elena is in Mystic Falls. That’s all twins and doppelgangers accounted for at present. Anyone else who comes up to you pretending to be one of us isn’t really one of us.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“The story of my life.” 

Trying to take her arm back, she struggled to get away from me saying, “No, after what you did, you shouldn’t be here. Get off of me! I don’t want your help!“

“Oh, get over it. You’re the one who is a powder keg ready to explode.” 

We finally got to where Katherine was, and I used the side of the tunnel to help lower Bonnie back down to the ground so I could free up my hands before moving to Katherine. I didn’t get far in my attempt to ignore Bonnie bitterly asking, “What did you to do them? For you to be here, it means – “

“It means I got the upper hand, so you’re right about that, just not in the way you’re thinking . . . Feel free to call Caroline when we can get reception again. I’m sure she’d love to fill you in on everything.” Rolling Katherine’s body, I saw the box she’d stolen and pulled it out from under her before opening it. There was a small glass vial inside. Must be the cure. Taking it, I stood saying, “Stay here until those capsules start working. I don’t want you wandering off and getting lost in the network of tunnels,” before I turned and halted at the sight of the man standing in the tunnel just outside the cavern. “Fuck.” 

He hadn’t stayed down for nearly as long as I’d hoped. I looked down at Bonnie again, and she was looking at him with way too big of a smile on her face. “Jeremy!”

Even though all I could really see from here was his blurry silhouette, it was obvious that wasn’t Jeremy. He was wearing an iron mask of some kind, and Jeremy was fucking dead. Try telling that to the heartbroken witch trying to get up so she could go to him. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.” I went to stop her, felt the sharpest of pains for a brief moment in my head, and then my nose began to dribble, but it wasn’t enough to stop me this time. Pulling my HK P30, I flicked the safety off and took aim, but didn’t get a chance to fire before I was pushed up against the cave wall with a furious, “NO!” 

Without thinking about it, I used my left hand to deliver a full strengthen body blow to Bonnie’s right side. She immediately recoiled and let go of my hand that was gripping the gun as she took a step back. Maybe I should’ve left it at that, but I had no idea what Silas was going to make her to do or what she was going to do of her own free will if she thought I was really trying to kill Jeremy, and I didn’t want her using her powers on me ever again, let alone right now, so with the space she gave me, I flicked the safety on as I pulled my arm back, and threw a right hook that dropped her to a knee. The second she went down, I flicked the safety off before taking aim on the man who had been approaching us the entire time. I pulled the trigger once, twice, three times just to be sure. Down he went, and I immediately knelt down to check on Bonnie. “You okay?”

“Get away from me!” Still gripping the sides of her head with her hands to protect her ears after I’d fired so close to her, she looked up at where Silas’s body lay and started sobbing. “What did you do? What did you – “

“Bonnie, look at me!”

“What did you – “

Adopting my more authoritative demeanor, I cut her off by grabbing her arm and yanking her with me as we headed in the direction of the body. She struggled and pulled and tried to yank herself free the entire way, but while I may not have been at my absolute best, those pills hadn’t started to kick in for her yet, which meant that I was currently stronger than her. It was really a testament to her own internal strength that she’d put in as decent of an effort as she had to try and protect who she’d thought was Jeremy despite her injuries. As we got to Silas’s body, she looked down with a massive sob, like she fully believed she was about to see Jeremy's bullet-riddled corpse, but a moment later stilled. Wobbling just a little, she looked from the body to me in confusion, and I said, “That is not Jeremy.”

“But – “

“I know . . . Jeremy was wearing his ring, and that gives you hope, but you can’t afford to have hope right now, or Silas will use it against you. Jeremy’s dead. The ring won’t work on him - not after he became a supernatural hunter. You need to get out of here before Silas wakes back up and messes with your head again to get you to stop me from killing him. He’s already made you see your Grams and now Jeremy, which means you’re vulnerable to his psychic powers, so you need to go whether those pills have started working or not. Take a right at the fork in the tunnel, and you should make it out okay from there.”

Looking back down at Silas again, a calm determination overtook her features. “You didn’t see him as Jeremy?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My best guess is that it has something to do with my curse, but I don’t really have the time to figure it out right now, and neither do you. You seriously need to go.” 

I saw movement behind her, stepped around her as I grabbed my dart gun out of my waistband, and shot Katherine with two more darts. She collapsed again, and Bonnie asked, “What are you going to do with her?”

“Drag her out of here.”

“She’s the reason Jeremy’s dead.” 

“Pretty sure there’s plenty of blame to go around if we really want to analyse it, but ultimately the one who did the killing was Silas. When you get outside don’t let anyone in here that Silas might be able to use against me with those psychic powers of his. I don’t know how long the cure takes to work, and if he goes back to being a powerful witch, then I want to do this alone as a safety precaution. I’ll bring Jeremy out too . . . I really won’t leave him behind, okay?”

She glanced sadly in the direction of the cavern before tossing the masked Silas a look that was so full of revulsion anyone would think her next move would be to spit on him if she wasn’t above such things, and then she gave me a reluctant nod before turning to start weaving her way back through the tunnel. I waited until she was safely around the bend and out of sight before relaxing, but before I had a chance to do more than exhale, I felt my nose start to bleed minus the headache this time and looked down in time to see Silas’s eyes pop open. His hand shot out to grab my ankle, and down I went.

He was faster than a normal human, but not quite as fast as Jeremy had been, and I’d say the same was true of his strength, but I was actually faster than a normal human too because my fighting instincts were so well ingrained, and the things I fought were so much faster than him that even though he was on me almost the instant my back hit the ground, it felt like I had plenty of time to get my gun under his rib cage and pull the trigger before he could really do anything other than attempt to pin me. He fell on top of me, and I rolled him off in irritation. “Well, you’re certainly no werewolf anyway. Their teeth and claws at least make it interesting . . . You’re kind of a let-down if I’m honest. You’re really just a creepy asshole at the end of the day.” Pulling a syringe out of my pocket, I added, “Let’s see what this does,” before I plunged my anti-magic serum into his thigh and got up. 

I didn’t know if it’d work, because I didn’t know what kind of magic was practiced back when he’d gotten his immortality. It could be the same spell that Esther had adapted to use on her children, and if it was, then this anti-magic serum should work on him the same way it probably would for her children, but with Expression being the key to the spell to get him out of here and presumably to crack open the Other Side, then there was a chance that it’d been used for the original immortality spell too, and Esther had found a way to adapt the spell without having to resort to Expression, because as far as I knew, she hadn’t gone that far over to the Dark Side. Of course, that’s assuming there wasn’t some other kind of magic out there that I hadn’t heard of yet, one that wouldn’t respond to the anti-magic serum, which was highly likely given that there always seemed to be something new to learn about magic. 

Anyway, I figured why not try this first to see if it worked, and if it did, then why waste a perfectly good cure on this guy when there were other better candidates for it. I had no intention of using it as a weapon, but Rebekah really did seem to want it. Then there was the off chance that Damon might want it on down the road or Stefan with his ripper issues, or other vampires I hadn’t met yet, who were deserving, the way Alice had been, simply because they didn’t think they deserved it. She’s who I was thinking of as I went back into the cavern to see to my fallen cousin. “Well, if I’m ever going to say this, then it might as well be now when nobody alive can hear it and yell at me for being insensitive, but . . . I told you so.” 

Looking around at the empty space around me, I shook my head. “And now I bet you’re another one to add to the list of people watching from over there . . . supernatural being that you are.” A moment later, I realized that Jeremy being dead meant that I’d never be able to hear what Alec had to say again. I hadn’t exactly taken advantage of my ability to speak to him through Jeremy the way I would’ve liked, but now that the option was gone, it meant Alec was really gone now too, so I’d sort of lost them both at once and only a few days after I’d lost Alice, the potential there’d been with Kol, Elena, and to a lesser extent Caroline too . . . and I was in no way going to allow myself to feel anything about any of that or the fact that I really was the last living Gilbert now or how Elena was going to take it. I couldn’t, not until I was out of here and this was over. Even then, I still might try to keep that tsunami of emotions at bay for as long as I could, but who knew how long that would last or what would happen when it hit? 

Exhaling the bitterness out of my system in one harsh breath, I looked down at my hapless cousin again and shook my head again at the tragedy he’d become before crouching down to look at his lifeless face. “If you are on The Other Side, then . . . I guess there’s not much more to say other than I’m sorry . . . You made some shady choices the last few days and did a lot of harm that I don’t think you fully understand . . . If this is the way you had to atone for that, then let it be enough. You weren’t at this hunting business long enough to truly become a monster, so there is no reason for you to think you don’t deserve peace. If you can find it, you should. If you simply can’t leave your sister or Bonnie and your friends, then I understand, but when they’re gone someday, and they will be just like everyone else, move on then, and you’ll be with them again. For now though, in the words of Henry Scott-Holland, _’Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used._ I’ll probably annoy you with one-sided conversations the way I’m sure I do with Alec, but unfortunately, it is what it is.”

Using my fingers, I closed his eyelids and moved to pick him up under the arms, so I could drag him with me. He’d go pale soon. His body temperature would begin to slowly drop too. His eyes would start to go milky, and rigor mortis would start at around the 2 hour mark. Depending on how long it took to get off this island, he might be coming out of the rigor mortis by the time we got back to Mystic Falls. 48 hours was usually the longest that took. After that, his body would start decomposing, and then what? Was there still room for him on the Gilbert plot at the cemetery? I think there might be since I burned Dad.

How would we explain his death? Car accident? Camping accident? . . . Yeah, a camping accident worked. It was believable anyway, and then we could do this by the book and have a funeral so people weren’t asking where he was all the time.

I got him around Silas, who still hadn’t moved, and made my way back down to Katherine, who also hadn’t moved, but I shot her with another dart of vervain before taking her satchel with Silas’s tombstone in it and placed it over my head and shoulders. Then I dragged Jeremy all the way back down to the fork in the tunnel before going back to get her. When I got her to the fork, I left her there while I brought Jeremy out into the main chamber of the cave where the ritual had been done before going back for her. From there, I got them both to the well, and I was going to have a hard time getting them out by myself, but I figured I could if I tied the end of the rope around one of their waists, climbed up the rope, and then pulled whichever one of them it was up when I got to the top, so that’s what I did. It seemed to take forever, because there were two of them, but I wasn’t done yet. Still had to go back and get the professor.

I hopped back down the last few feet of the rope, and went around to where the professor was. Was he still breathing? He was moving, so yeah. “You look like crap, Professor.”

Exhaling a tired laugh, he looked up at me, and it would appear he’d decided to use the rest of my sweatshirt as a blanket. I crouched down next to him again and asked, “You didn’t get this near any open wounds, did you? Because I bled on it, and – “

“No . . . no.” 

He shook his head to emphasize that, and again my eyebrows arched in surprise. “Nice job on the homework. How about we get you out of here as a reward?” Looking at the rock that had him pinned, I thought that maybe I might be able to get it up if I used a couple of stakes, one to act as a fulcrum and my indestructible one to push it up enough that he could pull himself out, but I wasn’t sure what kind of damage releasing his leg would cause after it’d been crushed. Crushing injuries were not something I typically had to deal with in my job, but I think read somewhere that they were a particularly tricky thing to treat if you weren’t near a hospital or ambulance service, and I think it was safe to say that we were nowhere near either right now. I think what made these kinds of injuries tricky were large amounts of toxins being released when the object was removed. Was that it, or was it something else? I didn’t want to make a mistake and do the wrong thing. Hm . . . I did have vampire blood capsules on me. He didn't deserve an easy fix after all he'd done, but if I screwed up too badly, I guess those were always an option. 

“Okay, first, I think we’re gonna have to tighten this tourniquet that I made.” Taking one of my stakes, I stuck it under the strip I’d tied around his leg earlier and twisted it until I was sure those toxins wouldn’t get through. Of course, neither could his blood, but one problem at a time. “Here. Hold this, and I’ll take a look at the rock. I’m gonna need you to keep it tight and still try to pull yourself out from under the rock when I lift it, okay?”

He didn’t answer, and I would’ve looked at him to see if he understood, but I noticed a drop of blood fall from my face and land on my sleeve. Shit. The anti-magic serum must’ve kept him down longer, but he wasn’t dead. “Cait – Caitlin.”

Looking over my shoulder, I muttered, “It’s not your dead wife, Snake,” and then paused at who I did see standing over me. “Well, if you thought that making yourself look like Stefan was gonna work on me - “ I dropped a stake I had up my sleeve while swiveling into a standing position in one fluid motion, but he caught me before I could shove the stake up under his ribs and into his heart. Still able to make the professor see his dead wife. Still stronger than a normal human. Still kinda fast as he shoved me into the nearest wall. Yeah, I was gonna have to go with the cure, wasn’t I?

My back hit the rocky surface, and I harumphed out a frustrated breath. “You should know I love beating the shit out of Stefan for sport, and you have no fighting skills at all.” I immediately followed it up by slamming my forehead into his nose. There was a loud crack, and he let me go with a frustrated cry of his own while I side-stepped around him to kick out his knee. While he was on his way down, I slammed his head in the wall, and by the time his knees did hit the ground, I’d thrust the stake up into his heart from the back. As he slumped to the side, I stepped back from him, and looked over my shoulder at the professor. “See. Not Caitlin.”

His eyes had gone a little wild, and I thought that I was probably gonna have to take him back to that place he’d been in Cincinnati when this was all over, particularly after what I was about to do. I just didn’t have time to do this the right way. Who knew how long Katherine was going to be down, or what she’d do when she did wake up, and I needed to get him out of here, because I wasn’t sure how much longer he really had. Then I needed to come back and finish Silas off, because the immortal psychic was getting a little too close to the exit for my liking. Going to another rock, I retrieved my new machete from behind it, and when I turned, the professor looked from it to me with just about the longest face I’ve seen before he mumbled, “No.”

“What? It might hurt for a second, but I’ll get that leg out for you without the pain I’m sure will be involved in doing it the hard way. We’ll stick it back on. You'll have some vampire blood to heal you up nice and quick, and then you’ll be sorted.”

Again, he quickly shook his head. “No.”

The abject fear on his face after that had me rushing out a frustrated, “Oh for fuck’s sake. Fine,” as I made my way to him, quickly re-did the tourniquet he’d allowed to loosen and set to work on getting the heavy rock up the few inches he needed to pull his leg free of it. Letting it fall to the ground when I was sure he was clear, I then rather harshly, picked him up under the arms saying, “Just focus on keeping that tourniquet tight.” I got him to the well and decided that while he may not deserve to be easily healed, he was probably going to die if he wasn't, because he really didn't look very good, and we were nowhere near the mainland, so I stopped to give him a couple of the vampire blood capsules before saying, “Give me your hand.” I took the knife I’d used earlier to cut my sweat shirt into shreds and poked a little hole in his palm. He hissed in response, and I let him go. “Keep an eye on that. When it heals, you’ll know it’s safe to remove the tourniquet. Keep it tight until then.” 

Gripping the stake that held the tourniquet in place, he stared at his palm and nodded. I dipped down to tie the rope around his waist the way I had the others and added, “Probably won’t heal until I get you outside, so I’m not sure you need to watch it that closely just yet, but you have the right idea . . . and don’t die for the next 24 hours. I don’t think the world needs those side effects.” 

He glanced at me with another nod as I got to my feet, and I looked up at the rope I had to once again scale with a sigh. “Th . . . thanks.”

“Just make sure you deserve it . . . No more supernatural shenanigans, or I’ll come looking for you. There are no more chances after this. Got it?” I looked down at him to let him know I was serious, and he gave me a reluctant, albeit solemn nod. With another little sigh, I looked up the well again, and caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Drawing my HP K30 from where I’d tucked it when I was dragging everyone around, I flicked the safety off, aimed, and emptied the clip into Silas’s chest this time. Maybe it’d keep him down longer. 

I think that at that point, the adrenaline might have been wearing off some, because climbing the rope that time took a little longer, and the professor was the hardest one to pull up here by far. When I finally got him to the top and pulled over the edge of the well, I was as gentle as I could be about settling him back on solid ground. “Has it healed yet?” He looked at his hand before shaking his head, and I crouched down to untie the rope before getting my arms under his, so I could pull him closer to the cave of the mouth and away from the well. If Silas had been able to get into the minds of the miners and students up here from below the ground level of the well, then he could surely get into the professor’s head from where he was if I left the professor in the cave. 

I got outside and saw Bonnie cradling Jeremy to the side where I’d left him. ‘She needs to be cleansed of Expression as soon as possible,’ was all I could allow myself to think about the sight of them at the moment. After dropping the professor off to the other side of the cave, I turned to go back into the cave but didn’t get far. Instead, I found myself getting tugged back, spun around and shoved against the side of the cave. I knew this had been a possibility, but I was so far beyond caring about any of her petty bullshit just then. “Hey, Kat. You look like you could do with a change of clothes.” Suppose that was down to me dragging her cave woman style through the cave and face down rather than the way I’d gotten the other two out of there, but to be honest, it’s the least she deserved. “I would’ve thought you’d be halfway back to the mainland by now.”

“Listen to me, you little – “

Looking over her shoulder a moment later, my eyes widened. “Klaus.“

Katherine’s face scrunched up as she said, “Fool me once . . . Where is it?”

“Hey, get the fuck off me, Kat!” 

I shoved her invasive hands away from my pockets, and she lunged forward to pin me to the wall with her hand around my throat. Her hand went for the pocket I’d reacted to again, and my hand caught hers and twisted her wrist into a pressure point hold she’d actually shown me how to do. Her response was to tighten her hand around my throat. “Let go, Eve.”

“No!”

She leaned forward until her face was no more than a couple of inches from mine and spat out, “Don’t think for one second that you mean more to me than my freedom. Hand it over, or we’ll see if that ring of yours still works, and I’ll get it anyway.”

“I used it . . . on Silas . . . now let me go, and run, you nut job.”

Finally, breaking free of my hold, she managed to get her hand in my pocket and take the vial from it faster than it was possible for any human to stop her. Looking at it with a smile, she stepped back saying, “God, you really are the worst at lying,” but came to an abrupt stop when she came into contact with the hybrid behind her. His expression had gone from barely bridled anger at some point to amused satisfaction now. Her face said what she was thinking clearly enough, and I’m pretty sure my eyebrows arched, like ‘I fucking told you.’ 

Her eyes narrowed into a glare in response, and then she faked left, blurred to go right, and ran into Damon, who looked to be very much hunter-free. I'd question if he really ever had been taken by a hunter, but I'd say the answer to that was yeah, he probably had been, and dealing with that is what Klaus had been up to today, because the second Damon plucked the vial from Katherine's hands, he tossed it to Klaus over her head, like they’d had this planned, and Klaus was behind her again not even a second later. Because of the way they were facing when he grabbed her, I couldn’t see what happened next, but I had a pretty good idea when I heard her start to choke as Klaus said, “Now, you can have your freedom. I’d go so far as to say I look forward to seeing you have to live without the one thing I’ve been told you love the most.” 

Okay, so that just happened. He dropped her to the ground, and she passed out clutching her throat a moment later. I didn’t take much note of the grin on Klaus’s face as he turned to Damon for what I’m sure was going to be some kind of commiseration over something they’d definitely discussed doing ahead of time. I was too busy lifting my dart gun to shoot Klaus and then Damon in the thigh. I got a ‘Damn it, Eve!” out of Damon as his leg gave out, and Klaus looking back at me with furious betrayal etched on his face as he too had to drop to a knee. 

While Damon did succumb to the vervain, it’d take more than that to really knock Klaus out, and rather than being bothered by him being pissed at me or by the fact that the first thing I’d had to do when I saw Damon was shoot him after some pretty hellish days away from him, I pulled my phone out of my flannel shirt pocket, and said, “Silas is real . . . Not sure how good the quality is, but here’s your proof. Now I have to go find another way to deal with it. Please stay here, so you don’t get hurt,” and tossed the phone onto some grass near him before turning to jog back into the cave.

When I got back to the well, I had a quick look down to see if Silas had somehow managed to start climbing up without a rope. He wasn’t currently climbing, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t and had just used the distraction outside to get away. Of course if he hadn’t, then it meant he probably didn’t have much in the way of jumping skills. Another good thing to know. I went to find a magazine for my handgun that I’d stored in another crack along the cave wall before going back to the well and perching myself on it. “Hey, Silas . . . You still down there?” Silence. “You know I’m fairly certain that with the minds you’ve been able to infiltrate over the years, you’ve picked up English, and I don’t know how to speak Aramaic or Ancient Greek . . . Could probably write you a nice Ode to Death in either though.”

I heard him before I saw him. “I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot.” 

He stepped into view, and yeah, that’s what I’d thought based on the voice. “Still sticking with Stefan, I see . . . and the first thing you did when you woke up was kill my cousin, so I’d say we definitely got off on the wrong foot.”

“He was a hunter.”

“Yeah, well, I know 16 in your time was probably middle aged, but by today’s standards, he still would’ve been considered a child.”

“Do you have any idea how disorienting it is to wake up from a 2000 year nap? Add whining and crying to the mix, and I’m sure you can see how it happened.”

Great. A self-absorbed, unempathetic, dare I say, narcissistic, piece of work who did not care if he came across that way or that it made him immensely unlikable. On the surface, Klaus was all of those things too, but there was depth there. He had heart buried underneath all of that, but this guy? This guy was just vain. “I can imagine it actually. I’m thinking if anyone tries to wake me up after all this, they should do it with a stick and then hope I don’t take it and beat them with it. You’re still a dick, and what’s worse is that you don’t even seem to know that.”

“Maybe I just don’t care.” 

“Yeah, I got that . . . You’re a bit of a sassy Stefan, aren’t ya?”

“Stop calling me that.”

“Stop looking like him, and your face will be less punch-able.”

Lifting his arms in frustration, he let them fall to his sides and looked around his surroundings before saying, “So, are you going to let me out of here or not?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m going to make this very simple for you. I want to die. You can even be the one to kill me . . . I just have a few things I need to see to first.”

Umm . . . yeah, killing him permanently was going to be a problem now. Probably best not to let him know that. “Raising the dead being one of those, right?”

“It’s really less about raising the dead and more about destroying the Other Side.”

I shouldn’t find that intriguing given who was saying it, but I’d be lying if I said that freeing all those souls and allowing them to find peace wasn’t at least a little appealing. “That might be what it’s less about for you, but letting the dead run amok is still a consequence of it. Why do you want to die anyway?”

Heaving an exaggerated sigh, like he was tired of the game we were playing, he asked, “Is it really so hard to believe that after 2000 years, I’m just ready for it to be over?”

“Well, considering you haven’t learned to really live in those 2000 years, yeah, I find it unbelievable.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything out there worth seeing.”

“Admittedly, people can be annoying, but there are plenty of places to go where they aren’t.”

“More isolation. Sounds riveting.”

“Not if you keep yourself occupied. There’s 2000 years-worth of books, history, music, and there’s TV and movies, and all kinds of inventions for you to try out. You could even learn how to roller blade, or snowboard, ride a bike, race a car, drive a car. You have a lot of catching up to do.” He seemed more than a little skeptical about everything I’d listed. “Well, when was the last time you went for a swim? 2000 years ago. Maybe you’ll enjoy it more than you remember.”

“Are you seriously attempting to coax me into wanting to live by suggesting I go for a swim.”

“Well, I wouldn’t suggest swimming to the mainland from here . . . You may not drown, but it’d be a pain in the ass to get there, and you’re already suicidal as it is . . . I’d suggest a psychologist, but I don’t think that’ll work so well with your psychic abilities.”

“I think you might be the most ridiculous person I’ve encountered.”

“Well, that’s an achievement given your age and the fact that you’ve hardly encountered anyone in all that time . . . You know, I’m not gonna let you spill all the monsters who have ever died back onto this plane of existence, so your choices are to get a grip, work on your issues, and make a real go of it, or I’m gonna make it immensely difficult for you to get out of here, and since you aren’t convincing me that you’re going to do the former, I’m leaning much more heavily towards the latter.”

“God, this is tiresome . . . Just kill her already.”

With a cautious glance, I looked over my shoulder, and really it was a toss-up of which one it would be. On the one hand, I was a little relieved not to see Damon come around the corner, because I didn’t want anyone to force him to hurt me. On the other, I was not happy to see Klaus. “Uh oh. “

He’d broken out in something of a sweat, and through gritted teeth growled out, “Run!” 

He was fighting it? Did he not see me as anyone other than me? Interesting. Silas’s powers did in fact seem to extend to compelling others to do what he wanted on top of the manipulation he found so useful. I wasn’t surprised that he was powerful enough to compel Klaus, just that he was that powerful with only about half of Jeremy’s blood. I would’ve thought he’d need more blood to do that, but maybe he did, and that’s why Klaus was able to fight it. Good to know. “Well, I think we both know that’s a bad idea for obvious reasons given your nature, so I’m gonna say no, and how about I do this instead?”

Still wearing my gloves, I reached over to tightly grip the rope I’d been climbing up and down all day before pushing myself off the ledge. I free fell for a good 20 feet before the rope went taught, and I slid another 5 feet or so, but I still had my gun in my other hand, so while I was sliding, I trained it on Silas and pulled the trigger when I came to a complete stop. Got him in the shoulder, because he was already moving to get out of the way, and then I couldn’t see him anymore, so I let go of the rope all together, dropped down the remaining 5 feet, and landed at the bottom. I doubted that Klaus would be far behind, so I needed to find Silas before that happened. Luckily, gravity was faster than him, so he was still running for the cavern at the back where the ritual to free him had been done when I took up my stance and made a fairly clean shot through his back. 

He fell in a heap on the ground, and I looked back up the well. “You good?”

I heard a gravelly, “Yes,” from the top. 

Although I couldn’t see him, I’d say he was more than a little annoyed and somewhat rattled by the entire experience. “I’m gonna finish this, and then I’ll be back up.”

Stalking over to Silas, I pointed down at his back and emptied my second magazine into him to keep him down for as long as was possible before bending down to pick up one of his arms, so I could start dragging him back towards the tunnel that led to the cavern where he’d been imprisoned all this time. I got him to the fork and decided that was far enough before I jogged back through the tunnel and got to the cavern where the ritual had been. When I got there, I started setting the timers on the charges I’d left in various places. Most I could still get to just fine. One had been taken out by the rocks that’d fallen after the spell, and really those three were lucky it hadn’t gone off then. When I was done in that chamber, I moved to the main chamber under the well and set the charges I’d left there as well before sprinting for the rope and starting to climb it one last time. I was about halfway up it when the first charges in the other chamber started to blow, and a second later, I found myself hurtling up through the remainder of the well at lightning speed as the rope I was holding onto was pulled up by the hybrid at the top. 

As soon as I broke through to the surface, there was barely time for me to get my footing before I had to start running for the mouth of the cave. Even then, I wasn’t apparently fast enough, because my chaperone decided to take things into his own hands, picked me up, and I had to close my eyes, or I just knew I was going to get sick when we stopped if I felt sick when normal vampires ran with me, and he was moving at warp speed. We hit the entrance at roughly around the same time the charges at the bottom of the well went off, and I only know that, because it’s when we started to slow down, so I opened my eyes and few seconds later had to close them again as a billow of dust shot out of the cave past us and covered everything in the surrounding area. 

Wow. My hulking hybrid friend had actually pulled through in the last stages of Hell, and we both made it out. We actually did it! Silas might not be dead, and nothing was impossible because of that, but there’s no way he was going to get through those rocks before he started to desiccate again. I also found it doubtful that anyone could get into the cave now, so he wouldn’t have anyone to mind control into helping him from this side before he desiccated either. 

I started swinging my legs to signal I wanted down, and the second my feet touched the ground, I did a little happy dance at the exhilaration I just couldn’t contain. I finished it off with a little whoop that ended in a coughing fit, but I didn’t care. I’d really needed that, a win of some kind, and a big one at that. It was so worth it . . . maybe not all the death surrounding it, but definitely the coughing, and I was so going to soak up that moment for all it was worth before I had to start facing the harsh realities of what had been lost along the way. Now, where was Damon?


	77. I've Got This

Turning on the faucet in the restroom at the Mystic Grill, where I’d made them stop, I thoroughly washed my hands and face of any blood and grime still left. Taking off my flannel shirt and black long sleeved t-shirt, I focused on my arms and neck next. My hair was going to need a good wash too. My eyes flicked to the hand dryers next to the sink, and I contemplated it. Maybe it could wait until I got home if I ran my fingers through it. I tried it, and the result wasn’t great, but it’d do. 

I glanced down at my cargo pants. They were black, so you couldn't see it, but if you were a vampire, I was sure you could smell the blood I’d leaked all over them from my stomach and back. Maybe that covered up the smell of the blood I must’ve gotten on them from Jeremy too? Was the same true of my shirts? My flannel had been open, so most of my blood had gone onto the t-shirt underneath of it. If I’d gotten Jeremy’s blood on anything it had to be the flannel, but I should err on the side of caution anyway. 

With a sigh, I picked up the long sleeved t-shirt and started washing it out in the sink. It was stiff from the blood that had dried on it, but at least it was black. I set to work scrubbing it with soap from the dispenser, and when I was sure it was as close to be clean as it was going to get outside a washing machine, I took it to the nearest hand dryer. There’s nothing I could do about the holes in the middle of it, so that’d have to do. I pulled it back on when it was mostly dry, picked up the flannel thinking it should be okay after I washed it at home, and stopped to give myself a once over in the mirror. Why was I doing all this here? Because I was fairly certain that if I went home to do it, they’d leave me there thinking that it would be in the best interest of everyone if I stayed there, and I refused to let that happen.

How was I sure that’s what they’d do? Because they’d already done it to Bonnie. Dropping her off at her house is what had woken me up. Before that, I’d been as blissfully unaware of my travels as Jeremy’s corpse for most of the way back. The initial celebratory wave that’d hit me had slowly started to dwindle around the time we started getting ready to leave the island and was boosted somewhat when I got to steer the boat back to the mainland, but I was dead on my feet by the time we made landfall and asleep shortly thereafter. When I woke up, I had no idea how we’d gotten all the way back to Mystic Falls without me knowing it, but we had, so I presume that Damon must’ve carried me from place to place. 

With the exalted feelings of my win having dissipated to a whisper by the time I woke up in the car, I was onto my next plan of action: Informing Elena that her brother was dead. Bonnie was supposed to be a part of that, or that was the overt plan I heard when we pulled up outside her house - that it would be for the best if she went in to take a shower and change her clothes before driving over to Elena’s when she felt ready to do it - but that decision had sort of been made for her. She was still traumatized, so while she’d argued a little with Stefan’s gentle suggestion, she’d gone along with it, because she'd been told it's what would be best for her and Elena, and now that she was home, I’d be very surprised if she didn’t just go straight to her room and crawl into a little ball on her bed, which is what I think had been the underlying plan when dropping her off. 

There was nothing wrong with it if that's what she decided to do - curl up and cry herself to sleep. It didn’t make her weak, or I didn’t think it did. It just meant she was suffering too and needed to take care of herself first. I, on the other hand, could handle it and would not allow anyone to treat me as though I couldn't. Besides, if it was anyone’s responsibility to be the bearer of bad news on this magnitude, then it was mine. That didn’t mean that it was easy though. 

I halted outside the Grill and saw my car still parked on the curb, so they hadn’t left me yet. Damon was in the driver’s seat. That’s probably why. He seemed to be tuned in to when I was coming back, because he saw me standing there almost as soon as I stopped and offered me a little wave. The look on his face said that he was attempting not to show it, but he was unsure, concerned - waiting for me or the world around us to implode. I briefly wondered if there’d been a growing dread inside him that had intensified with every foot closer we’d gotten to Mystic Falls, and I’d just slept through it all. It wasn’t just Jeremy or me telling Elena about it. It was everything that’d happened, how I’d respond to it all when it finally hit me, and if he’d lose me when that happened. 

I didn’t think he had to worry about that, but of course, he would. Lifting my finger to tell him to wait, I turned around and went back into the Grill, so I could use my phone. I gave Bonnie a quick ring. She shouldn't have to be relied upon as a crutch by Elena when she was close to collapsing under the enormity of what had happened herself, but if the way she wanted to get through her own loss was by avoiding it and focusing on something else, like helping Elena, then I knew a little something about that, and she should have the option to do that and know it was a real option at the very least. 

She didn’t answer, so I left a message. _”Hi. It’s me . . . Eve . . . Um, I know you’re still in shock, and I don’t really know if this will help at all, because I think everyone grieves differently, but you did well getting out of that cave, and I suppose now, you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, so if what you need to take that next step is another distraction to take your mind off of what happened now that we’re back, I’ll wait if you want to be there when I tell her, but you’re running out of time to let me know . . . This is sort of like your 5 minute wake-up call . . . If I don’t hear from you by the time I get to her house, then I’m gonna push ahead without you, which is totally fine too. You shouldn’t feel any pressure to be there, because she’s not the only person who lost someone, and you really need to focus on what you need first today. Only you know what that is, and either way I’ve got this, so . . . I guess what I’m trying to say is take your time or hurry up. It may not be much of a choice, but it is yours to make, and whatever you decide, hopefully it’ll make you feel at least marginally more empowered, because it demonstrates that you still have some modicum of control over your life in what can be a chaotically hostile and often devastatingly unpredictable world . . . Anyway, best of luck, and I’ll see ya when I see ya.”_

That done, I guess now I really needed to start thinking about what I was going to say to Elena. I really only had about 5 minutes to do it. Damon parked up in front of her house and cut the engine in what felt like record time. He turned to watch me, but my attention was primarily on what seemed to be a much larger house than the one I’d been imprisoned in a few days ago. The bitter of the bitter-sweetness of the victory seemed to be hitting now. 

Jeremy was in the back seat, Stefan next to him. I allowed myself to be momentarily side-tracked from the task at hand by taking solace in the fact that Katherine had disappeared in all the ruckus of the cave collapsing. It meant that that I didn’t have to worry about her making this a million times worse for Elena. Tomorrow, I’d probably feel differently about it, because she had to be struggling right now, but wherever she’d gone, I was certain that it was somewhere safe for her to be, so she could stay there for today. 

I had an idea of where that might be, so maybe I’d leave it for more than today, but I knew that ultimately where she was wouldn’t work out. Her being able to change her mindset after all this time was going to be difficult. I could practically see her now, keeping up the ruse of still being a vampire while carrying out her machinations over the phone, and eventually she’d do or say something that would see her being thrown back out into the wilderness on her own. At some point, she’d realize that the best place she could be was with me, because no matter how distant the relations actually were, I was family, and that came with a certain kind of built-in loyalty that she would have to do a lot to screw up, and she wouldn’t find that anywhere else. 

It helped that she knew the people I associated with extremely well even if they hated her. If she stuck around long enough she might stand a chance of eventually being tolerated if not accepted, just not for a while, a long while. I think they were all placing the blame for what’d happened to Jeremy on her shoulders, and yeah, Katherine deserved a lot of it, but so did everyone else, including me. It’s just that when it came right down to it, there was only one person who made the final decision to end Jeremy’s life with the flick of a wrist. That decision-maker was Silas, and he’d done it for no other reason than Jeremy’s screams of fear were irritating to him after a long nap.

Just thinking about it all again, I decided that it was probably time to get this show on the road. Caroline was in there. She already knew what had happened, or I think she did. Stefan called to tell her we weren’t far after we dropped Bonnie off. With a soft sigh, my hand reached for the handle, and Damon touched my other arm to get my attention, but also as a comforting gesture. “You don’t have to do this. Stefan and I can take care of it.” 

“I do actually have to do this . . . but you can bring the body if it makes you feel better. Me dragging his corpse to her front door isn’t exactly the most aesthetically pleasing way for this to be done.”

Sitting forward, Stefan pointed at me over the back seat saying, “That right there . . . don’t do that. I know cracking morbid jokes is how you cope, but you have to put her needs first, and hearing things like that is the last thing she needs right now.”

“You don’t know what she needs. Nobody does, including me, because it won’t be apparent until after she knows Jeremy is gone, and when that time comes, I’ll deal with it in whatever way I think is best.”

Turning his attention to Damon, he quickly said, “This is a bad idea.“

That seemed to be what snapped me out of the growing apprehension that I’d been slowly drowning in ever since I’d woken up. Looking back at him, I sharply replied, “You’d do well to remember that whether or not she and I have issues, she is my sister, we are all that is left of our family, and I am allowing you to be here as a courtesy. I will handle this in any way I see fit, and if you don’t like it, you can leave.” I hadn’t referred to her as anything other than ‘Twin,’ or ‘Elena,’ since the night she’d orchestrated the massacre of Kol’s sire line, but that didn’t change the fact that she actually was my sister, Jeremy had been my cousin, and this was a family matter, specifically, a Gilbert family matter, so he could butt out with his demands. After a quick look at Damon, I relaxed somewhat and added, “Can you give me 10 minutes to break the news before you bring him?”

He gave me a subtle nod. “Whatever you need.”

I appreciated his emphasis on the word _you_ there. With another sharp breath, I nodded - half in an attempt to acknowledge his meaning and half to remind myself that I could do this. Opening the car door before I could change my mind, I climbed out and commenced on the long walk to Elena’s front door. Should I knock? Should I walk right on in uninvited? I didn’t have to decide either way because the door that had been fixed in the time that I’d been away was thrown open as I made my way up the steps, and there Elena was with Caroline standing behind her. 

Whatever anger Elena’s mind had been fanning the flames of for the last few days was doused the second she saw me, and she quickly stepped over the threshold to throw her arms around me in a hug that was a little too tight. I didn’t put up a fight about it, but I was definitely aware of how long it lasted. A few seconds past what would have been considered way too long in my book, she finally said, “You’re okay . . . and you came back. I thought – Well, I didn’t know what to think, but I didn’t know if - ”

I interrupted her with, “Yeah,” and began trying to extract myself from her hold. The moment I had, a calmness overtook me as I nodded towards the house saying, “Elena, we need to talk.”

At my demeanor, she became concerned, and nodded in uncertainty. “Sure.”

Walking through the doorway, I had a look around at what remained of my handiwork. In addition to the front door being fixed, the mess I’d made of all the things I’d thrown into the pile near the bottom of the stairs had been cleared. Guessing both had been Caroline’s doing as a way to help Elena take her mind off of what was happening with everyone else, but as for the rest of the house? The wooden floor was still ripped up in places and destroyed everywhere else with the markings I’d left using the sword. A quick glance into the fancy living room said that Klaus had followed through on having Kol and Alice collected, but the couch where Kol had been wasn’t in there. A look in the TV room told me that it’d been put back in there, but I would probably have gotten rid of it rather than keep a constant reminder of the burnt corpse that had been on it. I’d imagine if you sat on it, you’d come away with little black flecks of charred remains that probably still covered it no matter how many times Caroline had gone over it with a vacuum. 

My eyes flitted to the fancy dining room, and the door there had been fixed as well. I’d say the things I’d broken in there had been tidied or tossed as well. The kitchen had probably been cleaned too, but I’d bet the walls were still ripped out if the hardwood floor hadn’t been fixed yet. The bit of the ceiling where I’d stabbed the sword hadn’t been fixed. Doubt the water damage upstairs had been repaired either. 

Yeah, I might not have leveled the house, but I’d ruined it, and given the news I brought, it seemed like overkill. I mean it was, and it wasn’t. Elena, like Jeremy, had done something really wrong in killing Kol’s sire line, and if Jeremy’s death atoned for his part in that in some way, then did Elena losing him do the same? Maybe not when you looked at the scale of the damage she’d masterminded, but in her small world, the loss of Jeremy would seem as immense, and the house being in the state it was in now really just . . . well, whether it was right or not, it made me feel guilt-ridden. 

We made our way to the TV, or less formal, living room, the only room I hadn’t done much damage to downstairs if you didn’t include the lamps and vases I’d taken from here to throw in my pile of their broken memories. I saw Jeremy’s game console sitting under the TV, and my eyes lingered on it a little too long before I had to force myself to look away. My eyes landed on Caroline instead, and she looked worried. 

Exhaling a longish breath, I looked around the room saying, “Well, this is awkward. Do you have anything left to drink that I didn’t break? The harder the better.”

Looking worried herself, Elena offered a conciliatory smile before saying, “I thought you didn’t like to drink.”

“I don’t, but alcohol freezes at a lower temperature, which makes it easier for me to drink. I’ll worry about being dehydrated tomorrow. I have a meeting with Meredith, and she said something about trying IV fluids if I’m not where I need to be.”

Turning to leave and then halting to turn back to me, Elena said, “Wait, if it’s a big enough problem that you needed to call Meredith, then maybe alcohol isn’t the best idea right now.”

“I’m fine, Elena . . . Really. I just had it brought to my attention that I need to do a better job of looking after myself, so that’s what I’m trying to do.” I should schedule a visit with my witch doctor soon too. I had some serious questions for Imelda about this curse of mine.

“But I say that all the time. I’m sure Caroline and Damon do too. Why would you suddenly start listening now?”

“Well, it’s not like I’m going to start cleaning my room or anything, but . . . I’m not a child, so maybe I should stop making others have to baby me when it comes to the bare essentials. Need to be in tip top shape for the next big fight anyway, right?”

She shared a concerned look with Caroline, and Caroline tried, unconvincingly, to stow her own apprehension in order to put Elena’s mind at ease, “If she’s seeing Meredith tomorrow, I’m sure it’ll be fine. What’s one more day of unhealthy living? I think I remembering finding some gin when I was putting things away in the kitchen. I’ll just be a second.” 

She was gone in a flash, and Elena’s attention turned to me as I settled on the arm of the burnt corpse couch. “What’s going on?”

This was almost as difficult as telling Alice that she was going to die had been . . . almost. “I’ll get to it . . . Why don’t you take a seat?” She moved to the cushion next to me, but I wouldn’t call what she did sitting. It was like she was almost hovering, ready jump up and run at the earliest opportunity. Maybe there was a part of her that already knew. “Look, Elena – “

Walking back into the room with a bottle and three glasses, Caroline asked, “Did you tell her that you’re staying?” and I looked at her in confusion. 

“What?” 

Handing me a glass and another to Elena, she unscrewed the cap of the gin to start pouring . . . and pouring . . . and pouring. The clear liquid came dangerously close to sloshing over the side of my glass, and I quickly looked up at her. Calm and cheerful on the outside, an absolute wreck on the inside. “Well, I mean you are, right?” She finally looked at me, and at my still bewildered expression, said, “I just think . . . well, maybe what I mean is . . . it seems really important to me that you make it clear that you’re not going anywhere.”

She went on to play hostess to Elena, and the sinking, hollow feeling in my chest expanded as I realized that she meant I had to stay . . . for Elena, like it was my duty to tie myself to Elena regardless of what I had planned for my life. The truth is I hadn’t really thought about it much after I got out of the house except for when I’d asked Katherine for her advice, and that’d mainly been so I could insult her by saying she was weak in the little game we’d been playing. I hadn’t thought about it on the way back either. I’d mostly just been planning to get through the next 5 minutes and worry about the next 5 after that and so on and so forth. Until now, I’d stayed in this town voluntarily after the Sun and Moon ritual, but now it felt a little like I was being forced into it, and that made me feel like I’d be throwing my life away if I did. I mean, Caroline was right. It’s what I should do, but I guess I had an answer to the question of what I really wanted to do now. 

I glanced at Elena, and she watching the liquid rise in her glass. It got to about a third of the way full, and she started to pull it closer saying a nervous, “Thanks,” to cut Caroline off. Caroline moved to the other side of her, and Elena switched out her glass with mine while Caroline was preoccupied with pouring her own drink. “Is that what you wanted to say? That you’re going stay?”

Well, on top of it feeling like something that was being imposed on me, it also made me feel like a bit of an ass to have said I was going to do something and then not follow through on it. I mean, I had started to consider Klaus’s abandonment issues before I left this house, but I had also been thinking of ways to accommodate those by making it seem more like an extended hunting trip away with Damon before I came back to visit Klaus . . . and maybe Tyler and Caroline. I’d keep doing my studies and handing in assignments while on the road, come back to graduate, leave again to travel over the summer, work on my idea for the new weapon I wanted to create with Imelda, go to college wherever that may be . . . None of that really included me staying here in any conventional sense, and I always followed through on things I said. That’s what kept them from merely being threats and taught people who didn’t take me seriously why they should. It was a survival tactic.

On the other hand, Jeremy did die, so surely that was an extenuating circumstance. Did it mean I had to stay forever though? I didn’t want that, and we were back to what I wanted vs what Elena needed vs what I needed. It was totally selfish of me to be thinking like this. I knew that, but I did seem to be facing some kind of nightmare venn diagram where most of what I wanted and needed did not overlap with what Elena wanted or needed. What did overlap though was a responsibility I had to her to at least help her get through this difficult time.

Offering her the flicker of a small smile, I murmured, “For a little while at least . . . Look, Elena – “ 

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, and grateful for the reprieve, quickly checked it. _Don’t start without me. I’m 2 minutes away._ Guess Bonnie could do with the distraction, or she genuinely just wanted to be here for her best friend. Either way, I now had to come up with something to stall until she arrived. “Do you have that list I asked you to make? I wouldn’t mind seeing it now.”

Elena quickly looked over her shoulder at Caroline - I assume to get confirmation from someone else that all of this was very strange - and Caroline sat up a little taller. “I think that’s an excellent idea. Why don’t you go get it?” Elena looked back at me, and I nodded to indicate it was something she should do, so she hesitantly got up before looking between us again and made her way for the stairs. She was walking, so that should just about get her there and back by the time Bonnie arrived. 

As soon as she was out of range, Caroline kept her attention on the stairs and whispered an almost inaudible, “Who was that?” 

“Bonnie.”

“How is she?”

“About as bad as you’d expect. She was there when it happened.”

“Stefan said you were too.”

“Mmhm.”

“So how are you doing?”

“So much has happened in the last week that I don’t really think much about it other than it’s just one more shitty thing that’s happened to add to the rest of what I want to avoid thinking about right now. I just want to get this over with and deal with the fall out.”

There was sympathy in her voice when she said, “Eve,” but the side-glance I shot her made her sigh before she changed what she’d been planning to say. “She’s going to be devastated.”

That was putting it mildly. “If vampires feel emotions ten times stronger than humans, then I’d say she’s going to experience something not unlike what I did when Bonnie ripped half my curse out – millions of tiny razor blades shredding her insides, being turned inside out, screaming – you get the idea.”

“Is that what you really think it feels like for us?”

“I think that’s how it will feel for her. When you lose someone, you’ll probably feel like the life is being squeezed out of you . . . sharp and painful at first until everything hurts in a dull, claustrophobic way, and more manageable, the way I’d imagine it is for most vampires, but this is her Achilles heel. That’s why you need to let me do whatever I need to do to keep it from consuming her until she can cope on her own.” 

“Well, what are you thinking of doing?”

I didn’t know yet. “It really all depends on how she responds when she finds out.”

That time when she said my name, there was a hint of warning to her tone, but before she could say more than that, the front door burst open, and a panicked Bonnie ran in yelling, “Elena!”

Caroline and I leapt to our feet as Bonnie rushed into view near the bottom of the stairs yelling for Elena again, and I quickly said, “You haven’t missed it. Nothing’s happened yet.” 

She looked over her shoulder at me with teary eyes, and I said it again in a calmer tone just as Elena came running down the stairs. “Bonnie, what’s wrong?!”

A brief flicker of fear crossed Bonnie’s features, while her head was turned in my direction, and then she managed to pull herself together enough to wipe her eyes and clear her throat before turning back to look at her best friend with a mostly neutral, somewhat somber expression. “Nothing. I just . . . I really needed to see you.” 

I totally understood it. At the moment, Elena was still living in a world where Jeremy was alive, but the second someone told her the reality, that he was dead, her world would be destroyed, and nobody wanted to be the one to do that to her. That’s why it fell to me. 

Exuding calm as I approached Bonnie, I took both of her hands in one of mine and placed my drink in it. When I was sure that her fingers had curled around the glass enough that it wouldn’t drop, I let go and extended an arm in Elena’s direction saying, “It’s been a rough week on everyone . . . Why don’t we go back in here, so we can talk.” 

After a brief look from Bonnie to me, Elena gave a hesitant nod and let me usher her back into the TV room. By the time everyone had settled, Caroline sat on Elena’s left, Bonnie to her right, both were nursing their drinks, while I moved around the burnt corpse couch to perch on the back over Elena’s shoulder. She looked back at me in annoyed confusion. “What are you doing?”

“There’s no room for me.”

Moving closer to Bonnie, she started to say, “Sure there is. You can sit – “

“I’d prefer not to sit . . . not on that couch anyway . . . so, as I was saying – “

“Wait. Here, I got this for you.” 

She offered me the paper she’d torn from a notebook in hopeful expectation, and having nearly forgotten about it, I stared at it a second longer than I should have before my eyes flicked to her, and I said, “Hold onto it for a sec. We need to talk, okay?” A little deflated, she retracted the page and put it in her lap before I said, “So, okay here’s the thing – “

“Knock knock . . . How are we gettin’ on in here?” Damon. My head snapped in the direction of the front door. Was my 10 minutes up already, or had they just assumed that with Bonnie showing up and presumably running straight from her car to the house that the deed had been done. 

My hand shot out to grab Elena’s shoulder, so I could stop her from getting up to go see what he wanted, as I muttered, “For fuck’s sake,” and the yelled back, “Not quite there yet . . . Give me a sec.” Looking back down at Elena, I huffed out a sigh before saying, “Look, there’s no easy way to say this, but I’m sure you already know on some level what I’m about to say because of who is here and who isn’t. Jeremy didn’t make it, Elena. Silas killed him.”

“What?” Issuing an awkward smile, she said, “This is one of your bad jokes, right?” She looked from me to Bonnie, who had a tear rolling down her cheek, then to Caroline, who looked guilty even though she hadn’t done anything, and then back to me as she said, “No . . . no, you’re wrong. He – “

“I’m not wrong, and it’s not a joke.”

“But he always wears his ring, so - “

With a shake of my head, I cut her off. “The ring won’t work on him, Elena. It’s made for humans, and he wasn’t one anymore, not after he became a supernatural hunter.”

Her eyes darted wildly from side to side, like she was trying to find anything she could cling onto to deny it, and then with the speed of a vampire got to her feet yelling, “No . . . no, you’re lying. You just want to punish me for what I did, so – so, you’re saying - ”

Sitting up, Bonnie tried, “Elena, I’m so sorry. I - “

That’s about as far as she got before Elena started looking around saying, “Where is he? I want to see him for myself.”

And now was the time for the parcel at the door. Damon, walked in first, without his usual cocky charm, and he was closely followed by Stefan, who must’ve insisted that he carry Jeremy in on his own. In a blur of colors, Elena sped over to them, and her eyes immediately began searching Jeremy’s face for signs of life. Looking for his hand, she lifted it, and touched the ring he was wearing before pointing in the direction of the burnt corpse couch saying, “Put him over here, so I can get a better look at him.” Stefan shared a look with Damon before doing as he was told, and then Bonnie and Caroline were moving off the couch to make room for Jeremy. 

Without even needing to think about it, Caroline wrapped her arm around Bonnie’s shoulders to comfort her, and Bonnie exhaled a broken sob in response, but all eyes were on Elena and then Jeremy as she went to him after Stefan stepped back. She fiddled with his ring, smoothed out his clothes, fixed his hair, and all the while still seemed mildly okay, mainly in a daze, definitely in denial. If I was expecting her to turn on me and kick me out of the house for playing such a cruel joke on her, that didn’t happen. Instead, the first person she turned her attention to was Bonnie. “If his ring doesn’t work, you can fix this, right?” 

Bonnie opened her mouth to give an automatic, "I’ll figure something out," and Caroline used the same sympathetic tone that she’d used on me when saying, "Elena," but I’m the one who burst that bubble. “If she could do that, she would have done it by now.” 

Why was I unwilling to play along the way the others might be inclined to do until Elena faced the reality of the situation? I mean, that’s clearly what they wanted me to do based on the irritated ‘Eves’ and reproachful looks I was getting, and I suppose that given my understanding for the need to distance myself from things like this, it might seem like I would be more sympathetic, but Bonnie was suffering enough as it was. She might be able to use Expression to bring Jeremy back, but at what cost? A life for a life to maintain the balance. That's how those things worked.

And if she couldn’t bring him back, then wouldn’t that mean that him staying dead would become her fault in her mind? She didn’t need to add that to the woes she already had when she was going to have to quiet those emotions sooner rather than later if nobody wanted her to go up in a big plume of Expression smoke. My opinion from the cave hadn't changed. We needed to worry about the living first.

Looking at me, Elena tried, “But then his ring – “

“I’m sorry, Elena, but he only feels pliable because he’s already gone through rigor mortis and is in the beginning phases of decomposition. I’m sure you can smell it better than I can. The ring won’t work. He – “

Stepping forward, Stefan went to grab me by the arm saying, “Okay, I think it’s time – “ 

If he’d actually touched me, I would have jabbed him with a vervain dart I had in my pocket, but Elena quietly said, “Wait,” as she turned to look down at Jeremy. “She’s right . . . That smell . . . it’s him, isn’t it?”

Stefan cleared his throat and then moved towards her as he answered a cautious, “Yes.”

I added, “But I suspect he’s just on the Other Side, so he can hear and see everything that is happening right now . . . if that gives you any comfort.” 

Looking back at me, she snapped, “How is that supposed to give me comfort?” 

She was being rhetorical, but I answered it anyway, because I knew it’d annoy her, and that was my plan as of this moment. Keep her annoyed, and she’d be less likely to sink into the hellish landscape that was waiting to receive her any moment now. It’d be a lot easier to keep her from falling into it than it would be to dig her back out once she had. “I don’t know. I don’t really find comfort in it myself . . . I mean, I kind of do because it means they’re still listening if I have something to say to them, but the thought of them – “

Facing me, Stefan said, “Eve, I think you’ve helped enough,” before turning his attention to Damon. “Can you get her out – “

“No!” I was so sick of people not listening to me! As his eyes darted to me, I moved closer, little puffs of icy clouds escaping with every breath until I was standing toe-to-toe with him. Reigning it in as best I could, I angrily added, “I told you in the car that this was family business, and I meant it. You have the face of his killer. It’s in poor taste for you to be here anyway.”

He took half a step back, and I was hit with ‘What?’ from both sides as he and Caroline asked the same thing. Without taking my eyes off of him, I answered, “You look like Silas. Of course I told him that he looked like you, which annoyed him, because technically he did come first, but the fact remains that it was that face and that voice that told me that he killed Jeremy simply because Jeremy screaming in terror annoyed him when he was waking up from a 2000 year nap, and for once, I would like that face and that voice to not make Jeremy’s death all about you or how you think it should be handled.”

“I see what’s happening here . . . You’re upset, so you’re just saying that to mess with me, right?” My expression remained unchanged, and he exhaled an uncomfortable laugh. “Come on, I don’t look like Silas.” Looking behind me to Damon for help, he questioned, “I don’t, right?” I assume Damon shrugged, because he hadn’t actually seen Silas, and I didn’t hear him say anything, so Stefan’s attention immediately went to Bonnie. “You saw him, didn’t you?”

“I, uh . . . when I saw him, he looked like Jeremy, and then he didn’t after she shot him, but he was wearing a mask.” Her eyes flicked to me as she added, “But maybe he took it off after I left . . . He couldn’t get inside her head. I know that.” Yeah, I really should have put two and two together a lot sooner, but it wasn't until I'd gotten out of the cave that I really figured out that if I got a nose bleed every time he tried to get into my head and couldn't, and if that was still happening when I saw him as Stefan, then when I saw him as Stefan, I was simply seeing Silas as he was.

When Stefan’s attention came back to me, I sniped, “Welcome to the doppelganger club, jackass,” and it wasn’t more than a second later that Caroline was saying, “Uh, guys . . . what’s Elena doing?” 

Everyone’s eyes flitted past where Elena had been standing to Caroline and then to where she was looking in the kitchen. Tossing one last snide remark over my shoulder on my way to the kitchen with Stefan close behind, I said, “You’ve already ruined my plan to keep her from unraveling all at once, so now you’re gonna have to live with Plan B. Stay out of it.”

Vampires. You take your eyes off them for a second, and they start grabbing the nearest accelerant they can find, so they can burn the house down. Elena might be on the precipice of the abyss, but she hadn’t toppled over it just yet. I watched her squirt the flammable liquid on the counters, essentially doing what I’d thought of doing when I’d been in her place several nights ago. The others tried to reason with her, but I understood it. This was her last ditch attempt at trying to keep herself from a looming crisis of the worst kinds of emotions, and inspiration finally struck on what Plan B should actually be.

I followed she and the others as she went back into the other room where she started squirting more of the stuff onto the objects in the living room until Bonnie stepped in front of her to gently take the bottle away and tell her that it was going to be okay, that Jeremy wouldn’t want this, and normally that would be the right thing to do, but without the task of getting rid of Jeremy’s body, Elena was truly left with nothing, and it all came crashing down on top of her at once. 

Incoherent babbling, tears, sobs bordering on wailing, and nobody knew what to do. I put my hand on Bonnie’s shoulder to let her know I’d take it from here as I moved to kneel in front of a crouching Elena. Bonnie stayed close, but gave me the room I needed, and Elena gave me the most heart wrenching look when she looked up. I wasn’t even sure that she was aware of who I was or maybe that I was even there she was that lost inside her own grief. What’s the first thing I said? Well, I was about to be my worst-asshole-self, so it was a rather forceful, “Stop it.”

“I can’t! I can’t . . . It hurts.” 

“Replace it with something else that’s powerful enough to match it . . . anger should work.” It did for me. “That’s your way out. Find it, and – “

“I can’t. I can’t. I – “

Okay, I hadn’t planned to do this. It was really more of a spontaneous move, but the last time I punched her, I'd gotten a pretty instant response to it, so reaching back with my hand, I slapped her as hard as I could across the face, and the breath was sucked out of everyone in the room including her as she froze, and I said, “If I make you feel violent, and you need to use me as a punching bag, then do it.” 

I wasn’t really all that surprised to hear the voice that spoke up from somewhere behind me. “Eve, so help me . . . “

“Let me at least try, Damon.”

Elena started to slowly shake her head, and I nodded. “It’ll be okay . . . I have it coming . . . It’s my fault, you know . . . I chose to wait to intervene until after Katherine was on her way out, so I could stop her and get the cure. It wasn’t more than a few seconds, but I was only a few seconds from getting to him when it happened.”

Again, she started to shake her head and choked out a sob, so I said, “Then how about this? I had a good idea that Katherine was going to kill him as soon as she had the cure, and I didn’t say anything to anyone, because I needed her where she was until I was sure that I could get there in time to stop Silas myself.” 

Okay, that one got her just a little. Her head tilted to the side as she appraised me, and I nodded again. “Yeah, and you know what the worst part is? I don’t feel guilty about not running in there the second I saw what was happening, because when I weigh up the pros and cons, I know I made the right choice. Silas had to be stopped, and to do that permanently, I needed the cure. I couldn’t let it run out the door . . . but then Klaus wasted it on Katherine, and that means that Jeremy basically died for nothing . . . how am I doin’ so far?”

Small tendrils of the anger were beginning to waft up in tiny, almost imperceptible flashes across her facial features, so I figured I was doing all right. “And let’s not forget that I broke your neck, so you couldn’t come. Maybe if you had been there, Jeremy would still be here. Even if he wasn’t, you still would’ve gotten more time with him, and that’s time that you will never get back now.”

That one got to her the most. It's what she'd been angry about when she opened the front door, because she'd been working herself up about it for days. I could tell she was thinking about responding. The danger of her losing herself to grief was warring with the danger of her losing herself to anger, but one she couldn’t cope with at all, the other she could, so I gave her the little nudge she needed. “He was alone, frightened, and screaming in pain and fear, and do you know what the last thing he heard was? Your voice coming out of me and yelling at him to calm down.”

I knew it was coming before it did, but I stayed put and let her pay me back for that slap I’d given her. My head snapped to the side at the force of it, and I exhaled a laugh as I brought my hand up to test my lip. Yeah, she’d split it wide open. Looking at her, I laughed again. “Is that the best you got?” 

At that she lunged, and I fully intended on taking the beating, like a champ. I heard Caroline gasp and yell for Elena to stop it. Then I felt Elena start to pull away as she was grabbed from behind, but she wasn’t long in shoving a similarly strengthened Caroline off of her, so she could get back to pummeling me, and in the interim, I shouted from underneath my forearms that were blocking my head, “No, let her get it out,” right before I took a couple of punches to my arms that I was sure finished shattering what had already become hairline fractures. 

A microsecond later, the frenzy stopped faster than it’d started as Elena was again picked up from behind, but this time by someone much stronger and just as angry. “Yeah, that ain’t happenin’.” As she was shoved against the nearest wall, a rather feral Elena’s focus seemed to mainly still be on trying to get back to me until Damon grabbed her face to make her look at him. “I want you to turn it off.” The words were out faster than anyone could react to them. Bonnie, in particular, is where my dazed attention went first, so I could see how much of a threat she was going to be to Damon, but she wasn’t where I’d last seen her. Instead, she’d moved over to sit on the arm of the couch closest to Jeremy's head. She looked like she was focusing on him, so she could tune everything else out. “Turn it off . . . It’s what I want.”

My gaze traveled back up to mess in front of me. “Damon – “

“Your way sucked, and . . . there.” Stepping back as Elena’s face went blank, he added, “All better now.” Well, I wouldn’t say it was better, but it was certainly another way to handle the situation. Didn’t think it warranted the pleased, almost proud look at his accomplishment that he had as he turned to look down at me saying, “Let’s get out of here.”

I looked from him to her, saw her turn to walk away from him, and a few seconds later attempted to scramble to my feet without using my arms. “Elena, stop!” 

Turning to look back at me with the box of matches in her hand, she calmly stated, “Aren’t you the one who said that setting fire to abandoned houses was a good way to get rid of bodies?” Taking a sweeping look around the house, she added, “That’s what you essentially turned this house into . . . I don’t want to live here anymore. It’s a mess. I’ll just set the fire, and we can go.”

“Uh . . . “ Arms wrapped around my midsection, I cautiously approached her saying, “Yeah . . . under normal circumstances I’d agree with you, but I think the easiest thing for you to do is let me handle it, right?” Her head cocked to the side while she considered it. “I am the expert, and I already have a plan, one that will keep you from having to explain the fire to the cops or make any statements . . . Why bother with any of that yourself? Just let me deal with everything, and you can go do whatever you like.”

“Can I go in your room?”

“What?”

“That’s what I’d really like to do right now.”

Why would she want to go in there? To rip it apart the way I had this house? Possibly. She wouldn’t be doing it for revenge. I'd say it would be more like a mild amusement for her, but she seemed really flat right now, like worse than Stefan had been, so I was gonna go out on a limb and say that amusement wasn't even close to being something she could feel right now. Guess that switch did get a little leaky with age. So if it wasn't to find amusement in torturing me, then why would she want to go in my room? My guess would be that it had more to do with her being pervasively curious about what I had hidden in there. “No.”

“But I can have my old room back.”

“Uhhh . . . “

“Or I know. I could move into Alice’s old room. It’s bigger . . . nicer . . . I could see if any of her clothes fit so I wouldn’t have to bring anything from here with me.“ 

Okay, so maybe she wasn't above taking the odd shot at me, but she didn't seem to be doing it for any other reason than to do it. Again, I didn't think she'd get any entertainment value from it, but to keep her from wanting to do it, I went with the opposite of what I wanted to say. “Sure.” 

She immediately changed her mind with a sigh. “I’ll think about it . . . after I’ve eaten. I’m starving.” Looking me up and down, she asked, “You’re still on vervain?”

“Yep.” 

Shelving the matchbox in the crook of my arm, she walked past me saying, “Then take care of this for me, will you? I’m going out.” 

My eyes trailed after her as she headed out of the room past a shell-shocked Caroline, a Stefan who turned to go after her, and as I lost the ability to see her when she rounded the corner, my gaze turned up to Damon. “What?” My eyebrow arched in response, and he rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t going to let her beat you to death. This way it’s win-win. She doesn’t fall into a pit of despair, and you don’t have to try and make her hate you to keep that from happening.”

Except now, I had to babysit yet another vampire that’d flipped their switch. “And yet my way could have seen us leaving this town a whole lot sooner if she never wanted to see me again.” Is that why I’d done it? Not even a little, but pointing that out to him was worth it just to watch his face fall the way it did. When it had, I smirked, and headed out of the room the way Elena had, so I could get some fresh air outside, but stopped when I got to Caroline and looked back at Bonnie. “You okay, Bonnie?”

“We’re not going to burn him, are we?”

She’d said it in an off-handed way, like she hadn’t even known she was going to say it or had, because she was too busy staring at Jeremy to keep the rest of the world at bay, but when I said, “No,” she looked from him to me, and I added, “There’s one spot left on the Gilbert plot. I’ll call Liz and Meredith after everyone leaves and get them to write up a death certificate that says he had an accident while camping. It’s not a million miles away from the truth, so when people ask, it’s not really a lie to say it and leave it at that. We’ll be able to give him a proper funeral, so people can say goodbye to him in an open casket, and he can get some kind of recognition . . . if that’s okay?” Bonnie gave me a considered nod before looking back down at Jeremy, and turning to Caroline, I asked, “Can she stay with you tonight? I don’t think she should be alone, and I'm pretty sure her Dad’s out of town on business.”

Glad to be given something to do, Caroline nodded before looking back at Bonnie. “What do you say, Bon? Do you want to stay with me tonight?” I was a little surprised by the uncertain look Bonnie gave her, but understanding it, Caroline quickly added, “I won’t be over-the-top and hovering, I promise. It’ll be low-key . . . okay, maybe some hot chocolate if you’re up for it, but that’s it.” 

Knowing that wouldn’t be it, Bonnie came the closest to a smile that I’d seen her have in a while before she gave Jeremy one last look and got up to go with Caroline. When she got to me, she stopped, and took a couple of seconds, but forced herself to look at me and say, “I was there too . . . It didn’t happen the way you said.”

“Close enough.”

“I’ve been thinking about it non-stop while trying to piece together what really happened, and I know you tried to save him, and when you told him to calm down . . . he knew it was you. I don’t know how . . . maybe it’s the same tone you used when you were training him, but he knew it was you, not Elena, because he said your name and started to ask you what he should do when it happened.”

“If he did, I didn’t hear that.”

“Because you were focused on saving him.”

“It’s more likely that it was the earplugs I had in at the time.”

“I heard you when you couldn’t save him. I know it knocked you sideways . . . It didn’t happen the way you said it did to Elena. If you think it did, I know you recorded it for Klaus to prove Silas was real, so you should watch it. It wasn’t your fault.” Yeah, I wasn’t gonna be watching that video anytime soon. When I didn’t respond one way or the other, she sighed before saying, “What are you going to do . . . about Elena?”

Glancing towards the door, I answered, “Leave it to Stefan while I sort things out with Meredith and Liz, and then I guess I’m on Mass Murdering Twin detail for the foreseeable future.”


	78. Christmas

My bedroom door opened, there was a hesitation on the part of whoever was entering, and then a few moments later, the blankets draped along the side of my bed nearest the door lifted to reveal a very confused Damon. Who needs words when facial features can say ‘what the fuck?’ just as well? That’s definitely what his arched eyebrow conveyed, as he looked at where I’d taken up residence under the bed. Suppose I’d waited until he was out of the house the last time I climbed down here. “So, are we taking wallowing down to a new level now, or . . . “

I briefly smiled and then looked up at the bottom of my bed. “I’m not wallowing. It’s just . . . this is just how much of the world that I can handle right now, you know?”

“Not really.” I glanced at him, and he added, “So, why don’t you explain it to me?”

“Well – “

“You’re gonna make me crawl under there with you, aren’t you?” 

I slowly nodded, and he huffed out a sigh, before getting to the floor and wiggling his way underneath until he’d managed to slide beside me. When he had, I took his hand, and he relaxed. My eyes flicked to the perimeter of my tiny little world, and I said, “Everything out there was just getting too . . . big, and I needed to sort through some of my thoughts in a place where I have total control of my surroundings and feel safe, or I felt like I was going to be crushed by them.” 

I looked at him to see if he understood, and he hazarded saying the one thing he was most concerned about out of all the things that could be bothering me. “One of those thoughts being that you’re mad at me?”

For making Elena flip her switch? “I wouldn’t say mad. I’d say I’m irritated.”

“Yeah, well, you saying you’re irritated just means you’re mad, and you don’t want to admit it . . . So, let me have it, and we can get rid of one of those thoughts that’s threatening to crush you.”

“You shouldn’t have done it. I was handling it.”

“Evie, she broke your arms, gave you a concussion, and she was just getting started. She’s a vampire. She was only going to get worse.”

“I know she’s a vampire. That’s why I knew that her being whipped up in a chaotic rage storm was the only thing that was gonna pull her back out of where she was.”

“Until you were dead and your blood was painted on all the walls, and then she would’ve been right back where she started only worse.”

“I don’t think she would’ve killed me.”

“You gave her someone to take all her grief out on. She wasn’t gonna stop . . . You know what I think?” Watching him, I shook my head, and he said, “I think you may not feel guilty about the choices you made, but you do feel guilty for not being able to save Jeremy, and you wanted her to punish you for that.”

There was a slight loosening of the tension in my chest, so there was something to that, but not quite. I just wasn’t there yet when it came to saying what the actual problem was. “It’s how I got through my time in the house . . . I was angry for a lot of it. I thought it would work for her too.”

“The difference being that you took it out on the house . . . nice work by the way. I particularly liked the floor, but the kitchen was something else.”

“Mm . . . pretty sure the entire second floor is ruined too, because I left the faucets running . . . But I didn’t just take it out on the house. I spent that whole first day that we were there fighting with her, staking her, and beating her over the head with what she did wrong, and then after that, I don’t know . . . I came up with a plan, and the better it got, the calmer I got, but I was still pretty relentless with my verbal assaults. Klaus said if he ever needs someone to psychologically terrorize his enemies, he knows who to call now.”

“Yeah, well . . . Klaus is the one who told me that the night it happened, you were more interested in punishing yourself than saving yourself, and it’s not like I haven’t seen it myself. You did the same thing when you couldn’t stop him from being staked and thought I was going to die.”

“Except this time people actually did die.”

His eyes flitted across my face, and he looked up at the bottom of my bed with a sigh. He didn’t want to talk about Alice at all, which to me, demonstrated how much he’d liked her, and he almost never liked anyone. Unlike everyone else who seemed to see her death as nothing more than a minor blip on their radars, he got it, and that meant a lot to me. Tilting my head to rest it on his shoulder, I steered the topic away from her and said, “And I don’t feel guilty about not saving Jeremy . . . I feel guilty because I didn’t train him well enough for him to save himself, and in that way, his death is my fault . . . And if he really said what Bonnie said he did when he heard me, then that just proves it. He shouldn’t have had to ask me what to do. I should’ve had him prepared enough to already know what to do when you’re bitten. If I didn’t even teach him that basic fundamental, then I had no business teaching him, and because he relied on me to do it properly, he went into it thinking he knew more than he actually did.”

“You had him for less than a week.”

“Yeah, but I’m thinking that the first thing a person should learn in hunting vampires 101 is how to deal with a bite, and I’m not sure it even crossed my mind. Not sure I ever said it to Elena either when I was training her. I think it just seems so obvious to me that if you’re bitten, don’t panic, so you don’t pump your blood out faster, but – “

“Hence the reason my brother says your heart slows down when you’re about to go on the attack.”

“I guess, yeah, probably.”

“Evie, if you think you can train anyone who isn’t a Tibetan monk how to do that in anything less than years or that even in that amount of time they’d be able to do it in a high pressure situation without having learned it from way too young of an age the way you did, then I’ve got news for you.”

“But – “

“I mean do you even know how you do it, or did you only find out you do it when Stefan said you did?” He turned his head to look at me, and I sulked up at him. Trying not to smile, he added, “And need I remind you that I also helped train him? Do you think it’s my fault he’s dead?” I shook my head, and he settled more comfortably on his back before saying, “Then it isn’t your fault either.”

“I’m not sure me believing that is as simple as you saying it.”

“As long as the seed is planted, I’m good . . . next crushing topic, or are you ready to get out of here?”

“What was the deal with Plan Z?” 

Grinning to himself, he answered, “As long as it gave you something else to think about inside that house, I’m good with that too.”

“Aw, come on . . . you definitely had a plan. It wasn’t just something you said to distract me from my problems. It may not have worked out the way you wanted, but – “

“Actually, it didn’t turn out a million miles away from what I was thinking, except you and I haven’t driven off into the sunset yet.” I waited for him to give me more than that, and he quickly glanced at me over his shoulder before considering it, and then looked back up to the bottom of my mattress. “I had no intention of letting her get away with the cure. I just needed a stand in for Elena, so they would go, and I could follow them there – something they would’ve never been able to do if Katherine wasn’t with them. I knew she’d get to the cure first, and then I was gonna take it from her by any means necessary, something she almost ruined when she pointed me out at the airport in Toronto, but I managed to talk Stefan around, and then that hunter threw a wrench in things on the island, but overall, if they had you, and I had the cure, then – “

“You could trade something they all wanted for me.” 

He looked at me again over his shoulder and gave me a reluctant nod. I guess, because he knew it wasn’t something I would’ve wanted him to do. When he saw that I wasn’t that upset by it, he said, “Now, I’m thinking I should’ve just gone to you that night. It’s just that when I heard what they were saying . . . I couldn’t let them take you from me.“

“I didn’t want you there . . . I mean, I did, but what I needed more was for you to be out here working on keeping them from getting that cure and either taking it for themselves or using it on Klaus.”

“Instead, I helped Klaus shove it down Katherine’s throat.”

Looking above us with a sigh, I slowly nodded. In addition to figuring out what was going on with my curse, I should probably start looking into psychics, immortals, Silas, doppelgangers - whatever I could find that might give me answers. I really didn’t think he was getting out of his tomb any time soon or possibly ever, but to be on the safe side, I wanted to prepare in the event that he did, and more than that, I was curious about how it all tied in together now that I had more pieces of the puzzle . . . Then there was Katherine. “I should look for her.”

“Vampire or not. She’s still Katherine Pierce. You won’t find her unless she wants to be found or comes waltzing through that door when she’s good and ready, and I, for one, hope that day never comes.”

“She won’t be that bad, just whiny, and it could be kind of fun to – “

Sounding whiny himself, Damon complained, “Can we just admit that she’s the one who actually killed Jeremy, so we can move on from ever having to talk about her again?”

“No, because Silas is the one who killed him.”

“Why do those mental gymnastics of yours have to extend to her?”

“Because whatever part she played in Jeremy’s death, she’s been punished for it now, and isn’t there at least a tiny part of you that wants to see her struggle as a human the way Klaus said he did, or was there another reason you helped him?”

“Is she, or is she not the reason we found all that blood of yours in the woods?” 

“I actually wanted her to do that . . . It worked better for my plans if she did, and I’m the one who made the amount of blood I lost worse than it otherwise would’ve been.” 

“Oh, I’m sure you did.”

“And the point remains that if you two decided that would be the best way to punish her for all that blood, then wouldn’t watching her suffer be why you did it?”

“Nope. I’m good with imagining it. Like right now, I’m imagining her slamming her hand in the car door, and now I’m picturing her being hit by a bus. I doubt the reality lives up to it.” With a slow growing smile, I turned my face into his shoulder and exhaled a laugh. He let me have the moment before asking, “So, are you ready to get out of here now?”

“I can’t. Elena - ”

"Forget about her.”

“Damon, I had to stop her from taking a bite out of Meredith yesterday, and I don’t want her to compel anyone into my room.”

“Another reason you’re actually down here, right? If she sends someone in here, you’re in a prime position to stop them and her before either knows what’s hit them.” I slowly nodded, and he snorted before saying, “Then, it’s a good thing Stefan’s on Twin duty today . . . So, let’s go.”

“Where?”

“You have no idea what today is, do you?” Should I? “Guess that answers whether or not I should be expecting a present.”

“Oh, balls!” I immediately went to sit up, and Damon’s hand flashed out to keep me from cracking my head on the bed frame. Falling back down to the ground, I quickly asked, “Is it the 24th or 25th?”

“Do you honestly think I’d let you get all the way to the 25th without - ”

“Tell me you didn’t get me anything.”

With a smirk, he responded, “I didn’t get you anything.” I relaxed somewhat, and he added, “Is what I’d say if I hadn’t, but – “

“NO!” Attempting to push him out of my way, I quickly asked, “Then what are we still doing here?”

Enjoying how much he was tormenting me and staying where he was, Damon answered, “Well, my girl was having an existential crisis under her bed, so I thought I should probably work on that first.”

If it was Christmas Eve, I still had time to salvage this, but not if we stayed down here another second longer. “Move!” 

He snorted again. “There’s the Christmas spirit.”

Giving up on getting out that way, I shimmed out from under the other side of the bed, and he was already standing across from me as I got to my knees. My eyes narrowed into a glare, and he smirked again. “While you’re off running around on your next big mission to save Christmas, you might want to consider getting Rebekah something too. Wouldn’t want Barbie Klaus to be the only one not to get anything in the Secret Santa gift exchange.”

“Wh – what are you talking about right now?”

“Oh, nothing - Caroline’s just been calling all morning. You made plans for today, and your friend with her can-do attitude doesn’t see any reason why they should change. In fact, she thinks it’s what everyone needs right now.” Losing the cavalier attitude somewhat, he added, “And I think she’s right. You need something to get you out of your own head and away from here for a while, and if the furthest I can get you to go is the lake house, then I’ll take it. Maybe after everyone leaves, we can stick around for a few days, be back for Jeremy’s funeral, and go to the New Year’s party Klaus is apparently planning to host for the town.”

“So, everyone’s just ready to move on already?”

“Nobody is saying you have to yet, but it’s what happens, Evie . . . Now, do you know what a Secret Santa is, or do you need me to tell you?”

Normally, I’d look it up myself, but looking at the time on my phone near the bed – along with all the missed calls from Caroline - I sighed before looking back up at him. “Might want to run it by me. I’ve heard of it in movies, but I might not be entirely sure what the rules for it are.”

\-------------

Walking up to the front door of the lake house carrying most of the boxes we’d brought, Damon grumbled, “Pretty sure you broke every rule I told you. You were only supposed to get one thing for under 20 for one person . . . and then whatever you want for me.”

“Yeah, but I really think Tyler needs his present to keep him on the right track, and if I got him something, then shouldn’t I get something for everyone else too?”

A blur of blonde and blood red colors came sprinting around the side of the lake house, and Caroline rushed out, “Thank god, you’re here. I didn’t have anyone to let me into the house, but don’t worry, I already started on the lights out here, so it wasn’t wasted time.” Taking a step back, she asked, “Why is he carrying so many presents?”

I did a double take of her outfit when I realized what she was wearing, and answered, “Well, Mrs. Santa Claus, it’s because I’m carrying the box of food you said to bring in your messages, my guitar, and the new keyboard I got.” I had musical entertainment covered for tonight anyway. I figured I owed it to Caroline, and this way, if there was something she wanted to sing that I didn’t know how to play on the guitar, I might either know how to play it on the keyboard or be able to figure it out with one better than if I’d just brought my guitar. 

“No, I mean why are there so many presents here? You were only supposed to bring two between you.”

“Uh . . . I may have gone a little overboard . . . so, um . . . do you want to come into the house, so we can get started?”

“I’m just going to finish up out here first. Why don’t you two put those inside, and you can start cleaning, while Damon comes back out here to help me with the rest.”

I flicked a look at Damon and suggested, “Wanna swap?”

“Nice try, but I’ll take my chances with the control freak.” I opened the door to let us both in, and setting my things down on the kitchen table, looked around with a sigh. I’d completely forgotten that the last time anyone was here, it was the night that Klaus had turned the locals at the bar into vampires. There weren’t any signs of a struggle or anything, because as far as I knew, Matt, Jeremy, and Alice had been here long enough to get Matt’s keys before Damon came in the back and broke Alice’s neck, but there were still plates on the table, and other little signs of life that said we’d left with the intention of coming back and never had. “On second thought, why don’t you go help her, and I’ll get started in here.” 

It'd hit him too, hadn’t it, or had he just caught a look on my face that made him realize what I was thinking? While I did hate the idea of cleaning, I wondered if it may not be a bit cathartic to do it, not like I’d be cleaning or removing anything that reminded me of Alice or Jeremy, but more like this had been one of their favorite places, so why not do this place up right to honor them. “Nah, I’m okay. Thanks though.” 

Looking around again with slightly more optimistic eyes, I wondered where I should start first, and Damon hesitated in leaving. When my gaze made its way back to him, he dipped down, intending to give me what I think was just going to be a quick peck on the lips, but then he lingered there before slowly bringing his arms around my waist to pull me close. It was exactly what I’d needed. There was an instant easing of the tension in my chest that had been there for days, and it was aided with his words as he pulled back to rest his forehead against mine. “Make it as big or as small as you want – whatever makes you happy. It’s okay to have a good time. You’re not letting anyone down by taking your mind off of everything for one night.” I gave him a little nod to let him know I’d try, and he touched his lips to my forehead before reluctantly letting me go to brave the lighting issue outside.

After that, I started with the plates. Those seemed like they’d be the easiest things to do. When those were done, I wiped down the counters and swept and mopped the floors before clearing out the fridge of everything that could go, cleaning down the shelves, and packing all the food items I’d brought in there. Kitchen done. Where to next?

I turned to leave the room when I heard a soft knock at the door and turned back to open it. Ah, another human. “Hi Liz . . . I am liking that Christmas sweater.”

With a smile as she came through the door, she intended to reciprocate after a look at mine, and exhaled a laugh. “Yours is . . . very you.”

Looking down at my Nightmare Before Christmas sweater, I grinned. “That it is . . . I brought the movie too . . . just in case anyone wants to see it tonight.” Watching it every year on Christmas Eve was something of a tradition that I’d made for myself since the first time I saw it. “Can I take your coat?”

She shrugged it off and handed it to me while she looked around. “I haven’t been here in years.”

“Better or worse than you remember?”

“It’s still as beautiful as I remember . . . but different.”

“Because Miranda’s not here?” I knew they used to be friends. 

She gave me a sad smile before saying, “She’d be happy to see it being used this way . . . So, I was recruited to help set up. Where do you need me?”

“Would you feel more comfortable with decorations or food? I haven’t started on either.”

“I have decorations in the car. If you help me bring them in, I could get started on those.” 

“Sure. Just let me put your coat away, and I’ll be out in a sec.”

Was it going to be hard to find someone willing to do the food? Caroline could cook, but she wouldn’t trust anyone but her to do the decorations. Maybe her Dad could cook? Damon could, so maybe those two should be in the kitchen. I’d say Stefan definitely should, but I'd been informed that he would be stopping by later with Elena, so most of the cooking might be done by then. 

Bonnie was coming with her Dad. I was fairly sure that Abby was coming too, but nobody knew that, because Abby hadn’t planned on being here until I called her while I was out shopping earlier. Those three had a lot to discuss. Maybe they could work on their issues while they helped put up the tree? Tyler was coming with Matt. They’d both be useless at pretty much anything. 

Last but not least, Damon told me that Caroline had informed Klaus that he would be coming – I think after Damon had told her that I’d already invited him unless Elena told her at some point, because I hadn’t said anything to her about it. Either way, I think she’d done it for me, because I couldn’t see her inviting Klaus if Tyler was also going to be here, and I think she was worried about me. I hadn’t exactly been returning her phone calls. Klaus was bringing Rebekah, and I was sure they were going to be fashionably late, so I wasn’t going to rely on help from either of them when it came to setting up . . . Better be worth it to be giving all those questionable vampires a free pass into this house. 

I helped Liz with the boxes she’d brought, then started pushing the furniture that Matt and I had moved for our sparring lesson back to where it’d been. After that, I started tidying the rest of the room and found one of Jeremy’s hoodies. Noting the pizza stain that was on it, I gently folded it, before taking it to the room where Damon and I would be staying, so I could take it home. I wasn’t sure if I’d wash it yet. I left our room and then hesitated before forcing myself to go into the room where Alice had stayed. 

Elena had taken over her room at the boarding house, and I hadn’t been able to go in there yet, but here, I figured that Alice hadn’t had that many things she could have brought with her, so it'd be easier to go through them. A few shirts, some skirts, a couple of sundresses and some jeans. There were some dried flowers on her desk next to an open notebook with some scribbled passages inside, thoughts or maybe the makings of a poem? I flicked back another page and found myself bringing the notebook with me as I sat on the foot of her bed. 

Should I really be reading this stuff? If she’d wanted anyone to see it, she would have shown it to somebody. On the other hand, she was dead, and did the dead have any real privacy? I let my eyes scan the first bit of writing on the page.

 _Rain clouds high above_  
_fresh witch hazel in my hand -_  
_freedom is lovely_

It was a haiku, wasn’t it? And so her. Reading it made me smile, and then I had to slam the book closed because it got a little blurry. Maybe now really wasn’t the best time to be reading through this. I should give it some time and then give it a proper look. If writing had been her thing, then maybe I could see about getting these published. She may not have wanted people to read what she wrote - probably because she didn’t think she was good enough and / or the thoughts were too personal - but people should know she’d existed. Maybe her words might even help some of them. “I really hope you can’t hear this, but that’ll be my Christmas present to you, Alice . . . a legacy of sorts.” 

I didn’t know where Klaus had put her or Kol, but I assumed they were next one another wherever they were and probably somewhere on his property. Studying the closed book in my hands, I added, “I have no idea what to do with regards to your legacy, Jeremy . . . Suppose it might be that you managed to wipe out thousands of vampires at once, but I’m not so sure that is the best legacy for you to have . . . a sister who isn’t a murdering toddler perhaps? Although, I suppose it isn’t really fair to call her that. She’s less of a murdering toddler and more of a straight up serial killer, the cold-blooded, nothing behind the eyes except a cruel intellect kind . . . She’s gonna be a problem. I can already tell.”

There was a soft knock on the door, and I looked up. “Yeah?”

“Eve? Abby’s here. Can you come let her in?”

“Uh, yeah . . . I’ll be out in a second.” I waited for Caroline to leave and then got up to put the notebook in my room next to Jeremy’s hoodie before heading in the direction of the front door. I’d never met her in person, but seeing her through the glass of the door, I'd say that Abby appeared to fit how soft spoken she sounded over the phone.

With what I hoped was a welcoming smile, I pulled the door open saying, “Hi, Abby. Glad you could make it. Would you like to come in, and I can take your coat?” She placed a hesitant foot over the threshold before looking around in what I could only describe as melancholy. “Been a while?”

“Too long.” She glanced at me before looking around again as she took off her coat and handed it to me saying, “I thought that maybe I could help set up.”

“And therefore have a valid reason for cutting out early?” She didn’t admit it, but she did look guilty in response, and I quickly added, “You might think that now, but trust me. You won’t want to later. In fact, I’d be very surprised if Rudy doesn’t head home alone tonight, and you and Bonnie are still here to be treated to some waffles in the morning. If you two do decide to stay, you can take the first room on the left. There’s a cot in the closet that we can pull out for one of you . . . and if you want to help set up, how does the tree sound?”

She gave me an uncertain nod, and I put her coat in a closet near the door next to Liz's coat. When I turned around, she was still there looking rather uncomfortable. “Everything okay?”

After a slight sigh, she answered, “I know you said your Mom was like me . . . “

“A vampire? Yeah.” 

“I was hoping that I could talk to you about that at some point. I’d like to find out what kind of an impact that might have had on you?”

“We can talk about it now if you want. I can honestly say that my Mom turning is what taught me that not everything is black and white. I don’t know if you’ve heard the rumors, but – “

“Teenage girl on the Council because she just so happens to be a hunter? I know who you are. Is your Mom why - ”

“No. Whatever you’ve heard about the phantom huntress or whatever they’re calling her is probably true. I am that person, but my Mom turning isn’t why. She’s actually the reason that I am also the person you see standing in front of you right now. My Mom turning ensured I kept my humanity. I needed her one way or the other even though she made a lot more mistakes after she turned, but as I said to Bonnie, you did the best thing you could for her by leaving when you were still dealing with being a baby vampire, because the worst thing you could’ve done for her was lean on her and make her feel like she had to be your babysitter. You both would’ve carried on that way indefinitely, and it’s too much pressure for a kid to take on by themselves. Now that you’ve gotten a handle on things, it’s okay to come back . . . Bonnie just has a very black and white way of seeing the world, so try not to rip anyone apart in front of her who doesn’t deserve it, because it’ll put her in a difficult position. My Mom mostly fed on bad guys . . . although blood bags are always an option too. But even if you slip up and make mistakes, Bonnie needs her Mom, especially now more than ever . . . and maybe think about getting her a Porsche. She said she wouldn’t turn one down if you had to compel someone to get one for her.”

Exhaling a laugh, she turned saying, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Maybe for graduation?”

“Maybe . . . So, you need help with the tree, right?”

“Yeah . . . Yeah, that’d be great, thanks. Liz is already in there. Just ask her to point you in the right direction. If you need any help, let me know. I’ll be around. I still have some rooms to tidy and then somebody should probably start on the food.”

“Liz is in there?” 

Looking over my shoulder, I noticed that she’d halted in her movements. “Right. That’s probably been left too long too . . . Well, I’ve learned that working on a task with someone you might be at odds with works wonders in helping your relationship, so . . . give it a try and see what happens.”

Shooting a semi-amused look at the teenager giving her advice, she murmured, “I’ll keep that in mind too.”

“Now or never, right?”

Another deep breath, and she rolled her shoulders back before lifting her chin ever so slightly in an pose that reminded me of her daughter before she repeated back a barely audible, “Now or never,” and made her way into the other room. I waited for an argument to break out and when it remained relatively quiet, I finished doing a quick clean of the rest of the open areas downstairs, dressed the rooms for anyone who wanted to stay, and then made my way upstairs to finish the place off. I put some sheets on the couch up there as a finishing touch, because I figured someone might need to stay up there if we ran out of room downstairs, and then headed back down to the kitchen. 

I was studying how to bake a turkey on my phone when I heard a very loud, “Daddy!” outside the front door, and here’s to hoping that Bill knew how to cook. Luckily, he did, and I think that much like his daughter, he wanted to be solely in charge of at least making sure the turkey and ham were done properly . . . okay, so maybe more than that too, because I somehow found myself being given strict instructions on how to make rolls, oyster dressing, crab dip and then a plum pie before being told to peel carrots and then potatoes. It was the worst. Of course, I had to do it, because he was down an arm, and I kind of owed him for that, as he subtly put it without really saying it. 

I was shoved out of the way when his daughter finished with the decorations outside and finally made her way inside. At that point, I got put on drinks duty, so essentially studied my phone to find out how to make mulled wine and eggnog, which were then put in big crystal bowls that Caroline had brought. Those were placed on a table in the dining area. By then, Bonnie and Rudy had arrived, and Caroline got them along with Damon to set the table. Matt and Tyler were next, and maybe I’d been wrong about them being useless, because their arrival got me out of the kitchen for a much needed reprieve. 

I invited Tyler into the house, and he immediately scooped me up in a massive hug to spin me around in a full 360. Putting me down, he said, “I got your present.”

The first thing I’d done today was go into the music shop in town and arrange for a full drum kit to be delivered to his house. “You liked it?”

“Are you kidding? It’s amazing!”

“Yeah, well . . . Your first lesson is Monday and then every Monday for the next 3 months. After that, you can keep them going on your own if you want to do them, and as an incentive, we can talk about maybe putting something together by graduation.”

“Seriously? Like an actual concert?“

“Gig. Like a house party maybe, but yeah.” 

I exhaled a laugh as he picked me up to spin me around again, and then he was putting me back on my feet and saying, “I won’t let you down.” I nodded an awkward thanks, and he turned saying, “Now, tell me there’s alcohol around here somewhere.” 

“Uh, yeah . . . in there. Pretty sure you’ll find a whole buffet of it.”

He walked off with Matt, and I headed outside to sit on the deck and catch my breath. Playing hostess was tiresome, and how many people were we up to in there now? Too many for me to feel comfortable. I stayed out there long enough that the sun finished setting, and the first stars had started to peek through in the twilight sky. It actually was really pretty tonight. Lots of oranges, pinks, and purples just below a darkening blue. Another car pulled up, and unfortunately, it was the one I'd been dreading, so my momentary peace was shattered. 

I really didn’t think it was a good idea for Elena to be here. I knew that Stefan thought it might be good for her to be around people who loved and supported her. It might help chip away some at that flipped switch situation, but everyone in there had seemed to be in a fairly good mood when they arrived, and from the voices and laughter that I was hearing in that house now, those moods had all been improved even more since they'd been here, which is exactly what everyone in that house needed after the year we’d all had. Her being here was going to ruin it. 

It’d go quiet at first when she walked in the door, because everyone already knew what had happened and wouldn’t be sure how to respond to being around a girl they’d known and loved her entire life, who had lost so much, and who was also extremely dangerous right now and nothing like the girl they’d known. Then after the initial awkwardness, she’d find ways to keep it awkward by acting out of character, which was her new in character, or by saying bitchy things, because that seemed to be her favorite thing to do right now – be brutally honest in an effort to get under other people’s skin so she could obtain some kind of advantage over them. It was something I did myself, which meant I could respect it to a certain extent, but she had a different way of doing it, like her delivery and affect were so flat that it came across as cold and cutting. 

That’s why I felt a little sorry for the vampire getting out of the driver’s side door of his Porsche – something I was sure she’d made him drive, because she knew it’d get to him in some way. Suppose if nothing else, her being here meant we all knew where she was and there were more eyes watching to keep her from becoming a real life Christmas Krampus devouring entire families out of sheer boredom and a hunger she had no desire to try and tame. 

I watched them head for the door, Stefan looking slightly hunched and definitely brooding. Elena, like . . . nothing. There was just nothing there. She walked right on in the door, or she must have, because just as I suspected, there was a lull in the noise coming from inside the house, and a minute later Stefan came around the corner. Right. He needed someone to let him in the house, so I guess someone knew I was out here and told him. “Hey, uh, would you mind – “ 

He pointed his thumb over his shoulder, and I slunk down in my chair before turning back to my view of the lake. “In a minute. Once, I do, I’m gonna have to go back in there, and I need to recharge just a little bit longer.”

“Okay . . . but Elena – “

“There are 9 other people in there who are all watching her every move right now . . . Don’t tell me you can’t do with a break too. Have a seat.”

Reluctantly moving to the chair next to mine, he settled into it, and then a minute later finally relaxed. “It’s definitely peaceful out here.”

“Yeah . . . you missed a great sunset.”

“Listen, Eve. What you said about Silas. I understand if – “

“Meh, you were annoying me. That’s really the only reason I brought it up. I don’t actually see you and think ‘Hey, there’s the guy who killed Jeremy.’ If it makes you feel any better, he didn’t look like you when Jeremy died. He looked like a moving statue, and when he did show up looking like you, it definitely made kicking his ass that much easier.”

I heard him exhale a laugh and glanced at him over my shoulder. “So, we’re okay?”

“I’m not sure we’ve ever really been okay, but I guess we’re partners now, so we’re gonna have to be . . . And in honor of that, I’m going to clear the air by saying that I’m pretty disappointed that you let Alice be sacrificed in an attempt to get the cure. You were her best ally when she first moved in with us. I thought she meant more to you than that.”

He watched me for a few moments before ducking his head, and finally said, “I did like Alice . . . I know it doesn’t make it better, but everything happened so fast that night . . . I completely forgot until Elena said you told her that Alice was dead. The second she did I remembered and knew you hadn’t made it up . . . I guess after that, I thought that for it to mean anything - ”

“You had to commit to getting the cure?” His eyes flicked to me for some kind of understanding, and I added, “Well, that worked out well for everyone . . . Kol dead. Alice dead. Jeremy dead. Bonnie traumatized. Elena with a flipped switch. Silas buried under a cave, but alive, and Katherine cured. Yay!” Slumping in my seat, I looked back out at the lake before saying, “I don’t even want to get into you planning to stow me away for my own good, Mr. Doll Maker, who is still walking around enjoying his own freedom. It’ll just piss me off . . . And now we’re good.” Looking back over my shoulder towards the house, I added, “We should probably get in there and see if they need help with anything else.”

“So that’s it?” 

He truly seemed like he’d been expecting more. “You were the last one on my list of people to scold. Now, I’m done. I’m tired of hearing myself complain.” Getting to my feet, I offered him my hand to help him up saying, “Come on.”

He walked with me to the door, and I invited him inside. He went one way, and I went another. Everything by then seemed to have been set up. The main living room was amazing, candles and dark red bows were dotted around, faux-real garland and white fairy lights were hung along the walls, the fire was lit, and the tree next to it looked great. Presents were neatly stacked under it. 

I wandered to where the dining table was, and it’d been given a similar treatment. There were candles with little wreath centerpieces, and nice plates. I didn’t look at them too closely, but I’d bet they weren’t gaudy and had just the right amount of class. It all looked so picture perfect, and I didn’t think I’d ever felt quite so out of place.

“There you are!” Caroline came rushing up to me saying, “So, I think I know what to do with the extra presents. You got a little something for everyone right? So I was thinking we could hand them out as very specific party favors. That way people who only brought one gift for the Secret Santa don’t feel bad about it.” I guess I hadn’t considered that might happen. I nodded in agreement, and she went to leave, but stopped. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah . . . “

“Because if it’s too much, let me know, and I’ll try to tone it down some.”

“No, it’s fine – more than fine. You did a great job.”

“We did a great job. I know you were coordinating everything in here while I was outside . . . Oh my gosh, did I push you out and take over? I totally did, didn’t I?”

“Nah, I was reaching my limits anyway.”

“Then what’s wrong? I can tell something is.”

“Nothing . . . It’s just a bit overwhelming, that’s all. Last year I was alone in my apartment for Christmas. I think I may have had a can of Spaghettios while I watched The Nightmare Before Christmas. The year before that, Mom was out hunting, so she sent a fully catered dinner for one to me, and it’s the first time I ever remember having what might be considered a traditional Christmas dinner. The year before that, I had to help her clean up the Santa she killed down the road because he’d been showing a little too much attention to some of the kids in the neighborhood, and then we had to move out in the middle of the night. When she was still human, she worked most Christmases. You’d be surprised at how many people dine out for it, and they tip more than usual . . . Anyway, you get the idea, but this is all so perfect.”

“And a bit much?” She threw her arms around me in a hug before I could answer and said, “I’m sorry . . . You said low-key, and I went overboard with it.”

“I don’t think you did. I think you did what’s normal by a normal person’s standards and have actually managed to give me my first proper Christmas, so thanks for that.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh, so can we . . . “

“Oh sorry.” She quickly let me go and studied me before saying. “You’re really okay with it?”

Okay? Yes. Comfortable? No. “More than okay . . . Let me watch my movie at some point, and I’ll be fine.”

“Sure . . . maybe after the music? You’re still up for that, right?”

“Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“And you’ll sing too?”

“Don’t push it.”

“Okay, well, I’ll take that as a maybe. I think dinner’s almost ready. You’re sitting next to Damon. I’m going to make sure everything fits on the table.” With that, she was gone almost as fast as she'd arrived, and I was making my way to the stairs, so I could sit and wait for everyone to be called for dinner when I passed in front of the door and stopped when I heard a knock. If I felt out of place, Klaus was a pariah in this group, so he would feel out of place too even though he would do everything in his power not to show it, and that meant that without someone to keep him company, he could also potentially ruin tonight for everyone else, but I was sure glad to see him. With a smile, I turned and opened the door saying, “Well, if it isn’t Saint Nik.” His face fell somewhat, and I smirked. “You’re not nearly as fashionably late as I was expecting. Dinner hasn’t even been served yet.”

Casually checking her fingernails beside the door, Rebekah muttered, “I told you there was no need to rush me.”

“Would you two like to come in? I’ll take your coats and be back in a sec.” In they walked and looked around like everyone else had while they took their coats off, and Klaus handed me a bag with their presents. I took the coats, like the good greeter that I was and attempted to fit them into a closet that was almost overflowing with winter wear, then ran off to put the presents from the bag under the tree. Finally, I went to my room to get the Santa hat I’d brought before hiding it behind my back when I returned. Klaus didn’t see it coming when I whipped out the hat and put it on his head, because he was too busy looking at the table and probably wondering where he was supposed to sit if there was no chair at the head of the table. No place had been set there for that very reason. It’d cause unnecessary tension if he took it.

Reaching up to feel the hat, he looked down at me with an expression that said he was not amused. “Once was more than enough. You are not calling me Saint Nik all night.”

“You couldn’t be more wrong about that.” His expression went a little stoic, and I added, “I think tonight we can table Klaus the Bloodthirsty and Klaus the Mad, and if that’s the case, then surely you’re closer to being a saint, so . . . ”

“No.” 

He was forceful enough with it that I frowned. “Fine. I’ll save it for when I see you on the battlefield when we play Risk later.”

“I take it that is a game of some kind?”

“Mm. . . . of world domination.”

At that, I got a brief smile out of him. “Then how could I refuse?”

“Well, I know I can’t . . . And I think you’ve been placed next to me at the table . . . right over there.” I pointed his seat out to him before sending him in the direction of the drinks table, and there he ran into Damon and Liz, who both seemed to be up for conversing with him even if Liz was a little tense about it. I looked around for Rebekah, and she seemed to have found someone to talk to in Elena surprisingly enough, so as long as they were both taken care of for the moment, I felt okay to relax a little on the step I’d planned to claim a few minutes earlier.

I’d just gotten comfortable when I heard, “Hey” and looked up to see Bonnie. “I was talking to my Mom. She said you had a word with her?”

“I did.”

“Thanks . . . I think we might take you up on that room you told her we could have . . . if that’s okay? We have a lot of catching up to do.”

I couldn’t agree more. “Sure. I hope you like waffles.”

She smiled. “Sounds great . . . and, um thanks, you know, for all of this. It’s been a really hard year for everyone. It’s good to be reminded of what we still have.”

“I think that’s a good way to think of it, but really, you should be thanking Caroline. This was all her.”

“Because you suggested it . . . and you could have easily said no after everything, but you didn’t, so thanks for that. I just thought someone should say it, because I think most of us are thinking it.” There was a tinging of glass in the other room, and she turned to look back over her shoulder. “I think that means dinner is served. We should go before Caroline has to come looking for us.”

Dinner was actually all right. I mean, there was a bit of a speech-off between all the guys. There were remembrance toasts to those who had been lost, toasts for the hostesses, toasts for those who were sitting around the table and blessings and so on and so forth. I gave up waiting halfway through and just drank what I had in front of me before moving onto the food. Elena did as well. Rebekah followed not long after that, then Bonnie and the two Moms, but Caroline held out until the very end, and it became quite entertaining waiting for her to finally get fed up enough to throw a tantrum, but she never did. 

The food was good, and the banter around the table was great, or I thought it was even though I suppose some might have thought that was pretty competitive too, but banter I could do. Speeches in front of a large group, like this? Not so much. After that, we cleared the table, and Caroline wanted to do presents. That went pretty well too. 

Bonnie liked the vintage necklace she got as her party favor. Matt liked the crossbow and finally worked up the courage to talk to me after the gift exchange because he apparently knew I’d gotten it for him. Caroline liked the shoes I got her and put them on for the rest of the night. Stefan got a new fancy journal and seemed surprised to get it. Klaus was intrigued by the puzzle box he got, and if and when he finally got it open, there was a little participation trophy in there for him. I didn’t get anything for Elena, because what was the point? 

Damon was the happiest by far with his presents. I mean, I got him some books I knew he would read, a bottle of the nicest bourbon I could find, and a black shirt to replace at least one of the ones I’d ruined by staking him, but it was the ticket to Gabon set to depart a week after my graduation that he really liked the most. I guess I just wanted him to know that even though we were sort of stuck in Mystic Falls right now, I fully intended to see the world with him, and I wasn’t letting anyone or anything get in the way of that. It also wasn’t a return flight, because I told him that he could pick where we went after that. I mean, I had to be back in the US to go to college in the fall, but I'd decided that no matter what, the summer was ours. 

After that, the only real issue was with Rebekah. I’d gotten her a shirt that fit her style as the party favor present, and she seemed okay with it, but her Secret Santa present was a bit more contentious. Holding the t-shirt in her hand, she asked an annoyed, “Why would anyone think this is something I would wear?”

Sitting forward, Matt answered, “Let’s see it,” and she showed the group. 

The older vampires in the room had no idea who was on it, but as Bonnie muttered, “Oh, here we go,” Caroline got to her feet asking, “Is that Bubbles?!” before reaching for it with her hand out-stretched. “If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.”

At Caroline's interest, Rebekah pulled it away from her and gave it a second look. “I didn’t say I didn’t want it . . . Who is it?”

“She’s from the Powerpuff Girls. I think it’s meant to be ironic, because you are so not a Bubbles.”

At that Bonnie had to say, “Caroline, let it go. It’s her present, not yours.”

Hurling herself back into her seat in a huff, she got pretty close to pouting as she said, “It’s not like she has any real appreciation for it.”

After watching the entire exchange, I dryly responded, “Or you know . . . you could show the vampire who has been out of the loop for the last 80 years why she should appreciate it.”

“But why Bubbles?” Well, I couldn’t answer that without admitting I’d gotten it, so I didn’t say it was because Bubbles had blonde hair, like Rebekah; I thought Rebekah could do with being brought up to date on some pop culture references; and okay, to be a little ironic about it since Bubbles was the nice one. Instead, I arched an eyebrow, and Caroline huffed out a sigh before saying, “All right, fine. After music and the movie, I’ll see if I can find some episodes on my phone for her to watch. Happy?”

“Very.” At my tone, she tossed me a hesitant look, and then relaxed before giving me a nod to let me know she’d calm down, and now I guess I knew Bubbles was the way to go for her birthday. Maybe I could get her something she could use to decorate her dorm room. 

As for the presents I received, Damon gave me a number of jackets to replace the ones I’d lost recently, including a leather jacket that was yet another upgrade from even the last one he’d gotten me, and I loved them all. He also got me _Ulysses_ and two tickets to see the Raveonettes on the opening night of their tour in Philadelphia, so I was ecstatic about that. I also knew what he was doing. He was helping me cross off the things I wanted to do before I died list, and I think my love for him grew like 10-fold for that. It really just set me up for feeling good the rest of the night. 

My Secret Santa was obviously Klaus, and I’m not sure I could put into words what that present meant to me. I remembered asking him if he was going to paint my experience in Hell, and he’d said no, but I guess it technically wasn’t a lie, because what he’d actually done was sketch it. There I was standing in the front of the ferry in the 5th circle of Hell with all this chaos going on all around me. I looked strong and fierce, and rather than having no eyes, he’d gone with a blindfold, that reminded me of the one lady justice wore. I mean, it was me, but it was also my Princess with No Name, and he’d captured her perfectly. 

I thought the attention to detail was astounding. Every time I looked at it, I saw something new in the background, and I wasn’t sure how to respond, but I knew I was taking a little too long with it. I didn't want him to think I didn't appreciate it, because I did, so while I studied the drawing, I just reached my hand up next to me to pat him on the shoulder in thanks, and Damon translated for me. “That’s like her highest form of praise. She’s actually about 2 seconds away from wanting to run out that door, so you might’ve over hit the mark.” 

The rest of the night was something of a blur. I wasn't really able to fully enjoy myself until Stefan took Elena home. It was before she could do any damage, so I guess I'd been wrong about her ruining everyone's night. Rudy, Bill, and Liz left during the movie, and Klaus and Rebekah left after we played Risk. That left Bonnie, Abby, Tyler, Matt, Caroline, and Damon to stay the night, and really, since I was sure that Tyler and Matt, in particular, would find being alone tomorrow difficult, I was glad they stayed. Tonight might have turned into something kind of special, but maybe tomorrow could be the kind of low-key I'd been thinking.


	79. Grief

Grief is a strange thing. Sure, there were supposed to be stages that were common to everyone, but it isn’t like you just graduated from one stage to the next, and when you had gone through them all, you were done, complete, whole. You could hop around from one stage to another and then back and skip other stages entirely. The lens through which you saw the world could change your experience of even those supposedly universal stages, and your relationship with those lost could also impact it. For me, it just seemed like grief was this ever-present cloud in the background, so I could get through the day, but it lingered and cast shadows over everything. I’d be fine one minute, and then the lightning strike of a memory would hit me from out of nowhere, and I’d be reminded that the person I’d had that memory with was gone. 

And who did you grieve when you’d lost more than one person in a short amount of time? If you weren’t grieving for one in a given moment, did that mean you didn’t feel the loss for them? No, they were just part of that cloud in the background, waiting for their chance to be remembered, and when you did, it may not even feel the same. If it hurt less, did that mean that person meant less to you? Not necessarily. It’s just that how you viewed them might have been different. Take Alice and Jeremy for instance. What started as sadness, shock, guilt, and anger with her had mainly just morphed into sadness and missing her when I thought of her. With Jeremy, I mostly felt guilty and numb. 

Stress and what was stressful for you seemed to change how it worked too, like Christmas Eve, I was reminded of Alice and Jeremy quite a bit with the location of the gathering and the stress associated with the number of people joining us until I was so preoccupied with the happenings going on around me that grieving for either receded back into that hidden cloud. I felt mostly okay the next day, a little sad when making the waffles, but it hadn’t been too overwhelming, and by the time Abby pulling me aside after breakfast to ask me for the recipe for my special smoothie, I’d been okay again and felt pretty good about her liking it that much. After that, everything just sort of fell into place for me. 

Tyler and Matt went outside to practice shooting with Matt’s new crossbow, and I was able to spend more time with Damon, just sitting on a sofa with him and reading. I felt calm and even - okay, but after Abby left and Bonnie and Caroline were left to their own devices, they both seemed to struggle without as many people around, so that’s when the memories in their own little clouds seem to strike out at them. In response, Caroline tidied, Bonnie went to her room to be by herself, and it stayed that way until it was time to start making a dinner of leftovers. Then they both bounced back to varying degrees. After dinner I put on _Die Hard_ , and they hung out in the kitchen to talk while Tyler, Matt, and I watched the movie, and Damon read in the corner, because apparently the movie was beneath him, but he still managed to throw out snarky comments about it throughout that showed he was paying a lot more attention to it than he pretended to be.

Everyone stayed the night again, but there seemed to be a heavy sadness the next morning, especially after breakfast when everyone was helping clear the last of the decorations before leaving in the afternoon. Back to reality, I suppose, for those who were leaving. Damon and I stayed an extra day, but for those going back to Mystic Falls, they were returning to empty homes, in the case of Tyler and Matt, or the places where they’d interacted with the people who had died as was the case for all of them to varying degrees, or I assume that’s what they were experiencing, because it’s how I felt going back . . . and I kind of had to assume, because despite the fact that we were all grieving for some of the same people and in different and similar ways, none of us really talked about it with one another, or at least nobody said anything to me about it. Maybe that’d change today, but I wasn’t looking forward to it.

Finishing off the last couple of touches on my make up, I walked out of my room and saw Stefan standing out in the hall two doors down for mine. He seemed concerned. Suppose that might be his permanent setting these days. “You should at least make an appearance.”

“What part of I don’t feel like it do you not understand?” came floating out of the room. 

Stefan flicked a brief glance over his shoulder in my direction for back up. “Will you talk to her? I think it’d be good for her to be there today, and – “ At that he did a double take at what I was wearing and quickly lost track of what he’d been saying, “What are you wearing?” 

Same thing I’d worn to the last two official funerals I’d had to attend, but this time, I was going all out on it. Jeremy had said it was missing the Eye of Horace before the funeral for the town council, so in honor of him, I thought I’d do it right this time. With a shrug, I answered, “Nothing that out of the ordinary.”

Stepping closer, he reached for my top hat, and I slapped his hand away as he asked, “What is this?”

I’d found it in a box of clothes that had probably belonged to their old victims. It was perfect. “Death of the Endless – look her up. I’m doing it right this time.”

In response, he blinked a couple of times before shaking his head and saying, “You get that funerals aren’t the time and place for you to dress up, right? Save it for Halloween. Go back in there and - “

“I swear to god, Grandpa, if the next word out of your mouth is change, then Elena is going to be the least of your worries today.”

“Now, if I was wearing what she is, I might consider going.” My eyebrows arched, and Stefan slowly turned his head to look back at Elena, who was now standing in the doorway. “What? If it fits her, it’ll fit me. I don’t see the problem with it.”

Well, I did, and that’s why she’d said it. “How about I get you the hooded cloak I saw earlier, and you can go as Mistress Death instead? I’ll even do your make up.”

I waited for her response, and she drew it out a little too long before saying, “I’d rather wear what you have on right now.”

“You’re not going any other way?” She smirked before slowly shaking her head, and I said, “Of course not,” before looking at Stefan to add, “I wouldn’t worry too much about it if she doesn’t attend. It’s not going to make a difference. Her emotions are going to be locked down tighter today than any other day since her switch has been flipped.”

“You’re seriously thinking of leaving her here?”

Not awake. “I seem to remember being able to go to Carol’s funeral even though Kol was here and out of his mind on werewolf venom.”

Seeing where I was going with it, Stefan switched to nonchalant consideration pretty well. “So vervain?” 

Matching his blasé attitude, I nodded, “Mm.” 

Watching us Elena said, “You get that I’m standing here, right?”

“Obviously. But who needs the element of surprise when he’s older, faster, stronger, can get in that room, and all I have to do is convince him to do it, which doesn’t look like it’s going to be all that difficult to do. Maybe you shouldn’t have been such a pain in the ass the last few days.” Turning back to Stefan, I added, “And let’s not forget, there might be people from out of town there, so really it’s probably for the best if she doesn’t go, or she’d treat it as an all you can eat buffet.”

There wasn’t going to be anyone here from out of town as far as I knew, but he continued playing along without missing a beat. “You know now that you mention it – “

“Wait!” Rolling her eyes, Elena begrudgingly added, “Point me in the direction of this cloak?”

So she could have a chance to say she was going to get it and actually do a runner? Good thing I’d put the cloak in my room so I could modernize it and give it to Imelda the next time I saw her. She didn’t need to know where I got it. I was back with the cloak, a long purple dress I’d picked up with Caroline at some point, a spare pair of long black gloves, and make up in less than a minute. The way Elena snatched the clothing away from my outstretched hand seemed to answer the question of whether she’d been planning to use going to get the cloak herself as an excuse to take off. 

The reward for foiling her plans? Something of a striptease as she pulled her shirt off over her head and decided to get changed right there in the open. It was totally intended to unsettle all those present, and I found the attempt boring at best. It’s not like I didn’t see pretty close to what she had to offer on a daily basis. Casually, leaning against the door frame, I flicked a glance in Stefan’s direction, and it would appear that her Little Miss Immodest act was finding more success with him. He was going to let this take his mind off of babysitting her, wasn’t he? It’d stir up all those feelings of his, and he’d be awkward and less inclined to look at her throughout the day, because when he did, he’d visualize what she had underneath of all those clothes. Well, considering that’s why she was doing it, and I refused to let her win, I needed to do something about that.

Hm. What to do? Take the attention away from her. Something out of left field might work. With a smirk, and in a shrill English accent, I suddenly said, “We shall say ‘Ni’ again to you, if you do not appease us.” 

At that, Stefan went from attempting to look anywhere but at Elena to me and snorted. “Talk about random. Isn’t that movie a little . . . old for you?”

Whatever. Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail was a timeless classic as far as I was concerned, and I guarantee he was a nerdy enough vampire to have not only seen it but to also know the next line in the scene even thought I'd started somewhere in the middle of it rather than at the beginning. “Ni! . . . Ni!”

With a poorly concealed grin, he briefly looked over my shoulder before coming back to me to say, “Well, what is it you want?”

My entire face lit up at him saying the right line. I’d just known that he had to know the whole movie by heart. I think him admitting as much made my day. “We want . . . a shrubbery!”

“A what?!” At my first ‘Ni’ in response, he finally laughed, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him do that. A couple more ‘Ni’s from me, and he chuckled out, “Please, please no more. We will find you a shrubbery,” and I felt a little like I’d kicked Elena’s ass in this minor battle. 

If it wasn't obvious that a battle had been waged, then there was at least one other person who got it, because it wasn’t more than a few seconds later that Elena was stalking up to me in her dress to grab my arm and pull me into the room and away from Stefan. “I thought you were supposed to be doing my make up.” 

Had I found a hole in her defenses? Was jealousy a possible way through them? Not today. It was most likely a tactic to get the attention to center on her again, but it wasn’t to make Stefan feel awkward this time. She’d given up on getting out of here before the funeral when I brought her the outfit she was wearing. Now, she was working out various ways she could escape during the funeral itself, and if Stefan wasn’t going to be too awkward around her to let that happen, then she already had something else to try – keeping all his attention on her until the right moment. 

“Cotton pads are over there to remove the make-up I’m already wearing.”

I really fucking hated the way her flipped switch seemed to make her think I was the Cinderella to her wicked step-sister. I understood it, because to some degree, it was how she saw me with her emotions on. I was family to her, because me seeing her as my sister meant that if I said I'd teach her how to make waffles, then I'd be there regardless of whether I wanted to be to teach her how to make some damn waffles, and if she was in danger, there's nothing I wouldn't do to be there. Her humanity being off highlighted what the real dynamic was to me, and I loathed it. “Nah.” She turned to look back at me, and waving my splayed hand in a small circle in front of her face, I added, “What you’ve already done is spectacular. All I need to do is add a few final touches to turn it into a masterpiece . . . Just don’t move.”

With a sigh, she looked up, and I pulled the cap off the black eyeliner pencil I’d brought before leaning forward. Starting at just under the middle of her eye, I drew a line down to just above her cheekbone, then over and back up to make thin rectangle. I filled it in with some white eye shadow then added a square underneath of it that was also filled with white. It sort of looked like an exclamation mark when I was done. I moved over to do the other side, and when it matched asked, “How far are you willing to take it? Because we can leave it at this, or I can do your chin as well.” She had a look in the vanity mirror over the desk and said, “It’s cute the way it is . . . I want a good conversation starter, not something that will make me look like a clown.”

“Fair enough. How do you feel about black lipstick?” Her eyebrow arched as she looked at me in the mirror, and then with another sigh, she held her hand out, palm up for me to hand it to her. While she put that on, I went over to the bed to pick up the cloak so I could help her put it on. Fastening it just below her neck, I thought it’d be a good time to fill Stefan in on what she was most likely planning and let her know that I was onto her as well. “Now . . . No, handing this off to someone else so you can make it seem like you’re in one place when you’re really gnawing on someone’s neck somewhere else. Got it?”

When I stepped back to admire my work, she mostly just blinked at me, and it was Stefan who asked, “How do you know that’s what she was thinking of doing?”

“There’s no mystery here on what she wants most as of right now – the freedom to indulge in being a vampire - and there’s nothing she won’t do to achieve that including the use of a decoy.”

She actually showed a modicum of agitation as she asked, “Why did you wait until you had me dressed like an idiot before you said anything?”

“Because twin sisters of death from two different comic book universes. How cool is that? And what better way to honor Jeremy, comic book fan that he was . . . you can steal that, by the way, if and when anyone asks why you’re wearing this . . . Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you there.” With that, I backed toward the door and only turned my back on her after I’d gone around Stefan. Clapping him on the shoulder, I quietly added, “You go left. I go right.” Knowing that I was referencing our game strategy to reiterate that we were a team, he nodded to acknowledge that he understood, and I whispered, “I know I’ve been pretty absent, so – “

“I understand.”

“Yeah, but it’s still not really acceptable, and I’m not quite sure what to do about that, but I will have your back today.”

Me participating in the funeral is why I needed him to once again be the one who was primarily responsible for fang blocking Elena. I had to represent the Gilberts, which meant a lot of greetings, sitting through condolences, answering questions, making decisions, and ultimately, it meant that when it came time to do the eulogies and all Jeremy had was an art teacher and Tyler to say anything, I had the new pastor and Liz looking at me to fill in the gap where Elena should have spoken. 

When the dreaded time arrived, it was really the first time I’d had a chance to be near the coffin, and I guess I hadn't expected it to be closed already. There’d just been this steady stream of people walking up to me all day and blocking my view, so it could have happened at any point, but I hadn’t been able to put his sketch book, hoodie, or one of the stakes he’d made that was hidden inside the hoodie into the coffin with him yet. I guess I’d do it on my way back. Wow, this walk was long, or it felt like it. Who thought it was a good idea for me to do this again, and why did I agree?

I got to within a few the steps of center stage and looked back to find Damon in the seat next to where I’d just been. He gave the pulpit an encouraging nod, and I figured if I didn’t put a move on, he might just come up here and do this for me. Bonnie would be the best choice, but she seemed to be staring down a lot today and just trying to keep it together. Probably best if she concentrated on doing that, so she didn’t burn the church down with everyone inside. With a final deep breath, I finished the last couple of steps to my destination, and okay, behind the pulpit was a better place to stand, because at least it put something between me and the crowd. I’d rather there be weapons hidden inside the pulpit, but I suppose I had a few on me just in case. Quick scan of the balcony, and I didn’t see any snipers up there, so that was promising. 

People were starting to look uncomfortable with how long it was taking me to start, or maybe that was just me . . . yeah, it was just me, or it was, but now it might be that some of them actually were sharing the odd look here and there. Should probably say something. “I suppose some of you might be wondering what I’m doing up here instead of Elena, and the truth is, this funeral was just one too many for her to handle . . . So, who was Jeremy to me? He was my cousin. I knew about him for as long as I knew about Elena, so I guess you could say I’ve known about him for as long as I can remember, and I’m not sure I ever really thought much about him other than that he was just around somewhere in my sister’s orbit, a caricature of a little brother who went through her things and messed up her stuff, embarrassed her in front of her friends, or cut her hair off while she was sleeping.” 

I saw Caroline and Bonnie kind of grin sadly to themselves at that, so I guess that must’ve really happened, and I hadn’t imagined hearing it at some point. “Then I met him. The first time we spoke was at my 18th birthday party, and it was clear that he needed help with something, so that’s what I tried to do, and it ended in an argument, but the next time I saw him after that, all was forgotten, or it must have been, because he felt comfortable enough to come to me for help that time. The first day of school, he popped out from behind an alcove with another issue. The night Elena went over the Wickery Bridge again, he showed up in her hospital room needing someone to talk him through it and calm him down. There was just instance after instance of him needing some kind of advice or bringing me a problem that he thought I could fix, things I didn’t even think much of at the time, but that somehow turned me into his support system without realizing it, and even though I can only see it now in retrospect, I guess it makes sense."

"In the last two years, he lost his parents, two girlfriends, an aunt, an uncle, and a mentor, and grief doesn’t just change you, it changes how people interact with you too. Avoidance isn’t uncommon, particularly with young people. Add in the normal alienation that is part of the teenage experience, and you’re looking at a potential disaster. That’s the way it seemed like it might go for a while, but in the end, Jeremy was able to grow from it and out of the need to find acceptance with his peers. Instead, he learned to find strength in himself, which is something a lot of adults have a hard time doing, and it sounds great, except a strong belief in yourself without really know who you are or what you want out of life can also be a problem. He just needed someone to point him in the right direction from time to time - enter me. No offense to Elena, but there are just some things you don’t want to talk about with your sister.” 

Okay, that one got some laughs I wasn’t expecting. “And there are just some things that a sister can’t say to a little brother who is looking for brutal honesty . . . who needs that so that he can both find his way in an often cruel world and to start to heal from the losses he’s suffered. In his search for the answers to who he was and what he wanted to do with his life, I think the time he stowed away in the trunk of my car when I left town for a couple of days was one of his better decisions . . . if I don’t include the black eye I accidentally gave him when I found him.” 

A few more laughs, and I added, “That trip didn’t teach him what he was expecting. What he learned instead was that hating the world isn’t the answer. It causes so much damage, not just to yourself, but those around you as well. The results are much better when you fight for what you can instead . . . Don’t get me wrong, he still made mistakes after that, but it was the start of a journey he needed to take, and he had a good heart. I'm confident he would’ve found his way eventually, and there's nothing he wouldn't have done for his sister . . . except listen when she told him what to do. He was really bad at that." Again there were more laughs that I hadn't anticipated, so I had to wait before saying, "Anyway, I think when it’s all said and done, there’s a lot worse that could be said about a person.”

I gave a little nod to let them know I was done and turned to put the things I’d brought into his coffin for him, but upon opening the lid, I found myself blinking down at it in confusion. Uh, where was my cousin? His tattoo had disappeared at some point. Had the rest of him gone invisible or something? Sticking my finger into the casket, I swiped an empty space. Yeah, I’d sort of figured that was a long shot. 

Quickly looking back at the congregation with what I’m sure was suspicion in my eyes, my gaze didn’t even make it to Elena, who had been my initial suspect. Instead, my eyes landed on the blonde vampire who had shot straight out of her seat and was caught in a pose of ‘no,’ with her hand outstretched, like don’t open that, don’t make a big deal out of this, just don’t. Bonnie, seated in the row behind her and next to her parents, was also sheepishly in the process of standing up. She too froze in her movements, and I briefly thought that there may have been more on my face than suspicion – something that made them both stop dead in their tracks, and then I was dropping the lid and stepping back up to the microphone to say in as calm a voice as possible, “You two. Outside. Now. We need to talk.”

The entire congregation started murmuring and sharing looks. If Matt and Tyler hadn’t also been in on it, then the looks they shared with the other two sure didn’t say that, so after taking a step away from the microphone to make my way outside, I quickly I side-stepped back to pulpit to add, “Matt Donovan and Tyler Lockwood your presence is also required. Thanks to everyone else who came. Please leave out the entrance at the front of the church, and by front of the church, I mean the one behind me that nobody used to enter, so as not to disturb us during this difficult time. To those of you intending to go to the cemetery, we will meet you there in due course,” and then I was hopping down off the little stage and making my way down the center aisle. 

Reaching out my hand, I grabbed the umbrella next to the back door without breaking my stride and had it popped open and above me by the time I stepped out away from the overhang over the door outside. It was another few yards before I turned to face the doors as a gaggle of 4 dodgy teenagers came bursting through them and collectively froze again as they got to the steps. I’d gone pure white, hadn’t I? A quick look at my hand that was holding the umbrella said as much. Well, I guess it was safe to say that I was pretty damn mad. “I don’t want an explanation. I already have an idea why. All I want is my cousin’s body to be put back in the box where you found it, and we’ll leave it at that.”

The door slammed open again, and there was Damon followed almost immediately by Stefan and Elena, but Liz wasn’t far behind and pushed herself forward to stand between me and the perpetrators. Arms up, and with her Sheriff voice, she attempted to keep the peace. “Eve, I’m sure whatever is wrong, we can work it out. Let’s just all try to stay calm.“

“Oh, it can be worked out. I just told them what they had to do.” Looking past her, at the others, I added, “I’m sure you’re all in on it, but whichever one of you actually has Jeremy’s body – put it back in his fucking coffin.”

At that her shoulders fell somewhat. “No, you must be mistaken . . . I was there when they brought him in this morning, and - “ A haphazard look behind her to look at her daughter, and she wound up doing a double take before dropping her arms all together. “Oh, Caroline!”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds, Mom!”

“What is going on out here?” 

Abby came out with Rudy close behind, and I almost instantly relaxed. Her parents could deal with this. “Your daughter needs grief counselling, or she’s gonna try to bring him back.” 

“Like hell she is!” Think there might’ve been a slight echo, as Abby got it out just before Rudy did.

I looked at Bonnie before saying, “But that’s the plan, isn’t it? I have no idea when you guys did it. I’ve been a little busy today, so I didn’t notice that it wasn’t an open casket the way it should have been until I was up there, but no corpse for people to see leaves room for the possibility that he might suddenly show up some day . . . maybe the propaganda merchants in your midst have already started saying that we’re burying an empty casket, or maybe he was so decomposed when we found him that we couldn’t have the casket open. Forget about dental records and all the rest that can confirm that these days. We somehow still thought it was him, but it wasn’t. Either way, you guys are holding onto him to keep it from being official. You need to let him go.”

Stepping around the others to make her way to the front and moving past Liz, Bonnie waited until she was almost toe to toe with me to yell, “How can you say that?! After everything you said in there, how can give you up on him? He needs us!”

“It’s how it works, Bonnie! It’s the cycle of life and death. Even vampires only prolong the inevitable for a little while, but it will eventually catch up to them too.”

“But I can save him!”

“There’s nothing to save. You mean bring him back, and you can’t do that without some serious consequences. Nature needs a balance.”

“Not with Expression. I can – “

“Do I need to remind you of what happened to Shane’s wife when she tried to bring back her son? It killed her, and she still failed.”

“Maybe she couldn’t do it, but there’s a reason you made sure Silas stayed away from me in that cave. If I’m powerful enough to bring down the veil, then – “

“Not yet you’re not.” 

At the she hesitated. “I thought you said he needed me in order to bring it down because he couldn’t do it himself.”

“That’s true, but you’re still not powerful enough to do it yet, because you haven’t completed the Expression triangle. Are you really prepared to sacrifice 12 witches? Because that’s what it’ll take for you to have enough power to drop the veil and keep Jeremy on this side while you close it back up again . . . which is what I’m guessing you were thinking of doing.” Looking back at the others I added, “I mean thousands of vampires were already snuffed out in the blink of an eye for nothing . . . Are you all just going to continue doing whatever the hell it is you want and round up 12 witches next?” My eyes went back to Bonnie, who had tears streaming down her face by then. “Maybe burn them at the stake for old time’s sake? Or strip them off their powers first, and then hunt them down with a hatchet? Poisoning? Something a little less frightening and as painless as possible, perhaps? . . . How do you want to do it, Bonnie?” 

Choking out, “I just – I just – “

Without taking my eyes off her as she broke out into a fit of sobs, I put my hand up to keep the others back when it looked like Caroline and Abby were going to come comfort her. I just didn’t think it was safe. “I know. Believe me, I do. There’s a reason Silas’s scam is as successful as it is. Letting go of a loved one is one of the hardest things we do, but just because you might be able to bring him back, doesn’t mean you should. It will almost certainly kill you in the process, and you will have also done what Silas wanted the entire time. In the off chance that you do survive long enough to put the veil back up, does it go back to being fine, like nothing happened? I don’t know. Maybe, but maybe it’ll also weaken the veil worse than the last time you poked a hole in it or even The Other Side itself. What happens to all the souls that are already there if The Other Side starts to break down? Do they all find peace, the way I hope, or are they just wiped out, because that can happen too . . . and I think you’re gonna have to take whatever it is you’re feeling, direct it somewhere, and let it go.”

“I can’t just let it go! Elena needs him. I need him. I loved him!”

Trying not to get frustrated, I slowly nodded before saying, “Yeah, I get that . . . . But you do know that the wind situation isn’t me this time right?” At that she finally noticed what was becoming something of a weak dust devil circling around the two of us. It’d be swell if that didn’t pick up any steam while I was standing in the middle of it. “You need to find a focal point and – “ 

No time to really waste explaining it, so I cut myself off, grabbed her by the shoulders, and turned her towards one of the trees surrounding the church. Mm. Not that one. It looked too old to be obliterated. It deserved some respect. I pointed her towards a sapling, felt a little bad about it not having more of a chance at life than that, and was in the process of turning her towards a middle aged looking tree when she finally shrugged my hands off her shoulders. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to find the right tree . . . That one . . . see it? Focus everything you’re feeling right now on it, the frustration, rage, sorrow, and send it out to that tree and only that tree. Blow it up . . . set it on fire, but get it all out in one burst. Leave nothing on the table . . . and leave the other trees alone.” She shot me a side-glance, and I shrugged. “What? I’ll feel bad if you don’t. One is bad enough.” 

Exhaling a short breath she looked at the tree. “I’m not sure – “

“Bonnie, you need to do something and fast, or can you seriously not feel that vibration in the soles of your feet? If you make the ground swallow me whole, I’m gonna be pissed.” 

At that, she looked down at her feet before looking over her shoulder at her Mom, and Abby looked worried, but she gave her a slight nod. “Don’t lose yourself to it, but you can’t keep your emotions all bottled up, or the Expression will consume you.”

Looking like she felt a little better about it, Bonnie turned back to the tree, and I counted her down. “Clench your fists, scream, cry, do whatever you’ve gotta do. No judgement here as long as the tree is the only one who gets it. 3 . . . 2 . . . 1” There was a definite shift in the air, and the buzzing around us stopped. About a second later several things happened almost at once. There was a whoosh near the tree as Bonnie began a rage-filled scream. All eyes, including mine, either went to her or the tree, and simultaneously, I reached up to the black ribbon around my top hat to pull out a bo-shuriken, or throwing spike, coated with the most potent vervain syrup I had. A few moments after that, Bonnie’s scream trailed off into a wail as her knees buckled, all three of my trees were on fire, and Elena was down near the corner of the church.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the moment that Stefan realized she wasn’t beside him, the immediate panic, the instant that he spotted her, and then the follow up look to me, like ‘Was that you?’ I’d been expecting something out of her, and that’d seemed like the most opportune moment for her to try. I shrugged, and he gave me a nod of thanks before I took a knee next to Bonnie, who was curled in on herself and Caroline, who had an arm protectively flung around Bonnie's back. “Not bad, Bonnie . . . So . . . Can I have my cousin’s body back now . . . please?”

Looking at me, Caroline whined, “Eve, can you just give us a minute?!”

“Seriously, Caroline, you have some nerve to say that to me when we’re in the middle of his funeral. There are people on their way to the cemetery as we speak.” 

Would it have ruined anything if I’d given her that minute the way she’d wanted? Probably not, so we were both probably right and wrong to varying degrees, which is why I think she may not have had an immediate response to what I’d said and merely gave me blank look before Liz walked over to us saying, “She’s right, sweetheart. He wasn’t yours to take. She’s his next of kin, so – “

“Actually, Elena – “

Fucking hell. I quickly cut Caroline off by saying, “Elena is checked out, and I am technically the last living Gilbert; ergo, I am his next of kin.”

Crouching down next to us, Liz placed her hand on Caroline’s shoulder to gently add, “I know it’s hard, but it’s time to let him go.”

Attempting to get her sobs under control, Bonnie hiccuped out, “Setting the fire at his house would have been better . . . at least that way, it wouldn’t have been as certain, but this is . . . this is closing the door on him ever coming back to this town, and this is his home . . . what if . . . what if I don't use Expression, but can still find another way . . . just don’t . . . don’t make him being dead so public that it’s final.”

“Yeah, I’m still not really understanding the logic here other than it being grief logic. You guys could have just asked for it to be a closed-casket without taking his body.”

Caroline quickly responded with, “Would you have listened?! I mean, you don’t exactly make it easy sometimes. You just decided that – “

“I know you’re not good at high stress emotional situations, and you were just trying to help Bonnie out today, but stop talking. This is all approaching and / or exceeding Elena fucking up my Dad’s funeral levels here, and I think I’ve been more than fair so far.” Looking down at Bonnie, I added, “Give me your word that you’ll lose the Expression, as in get into witch rehab by tomorrow at the latest, and seek some serious grief counselling as soon as that’s done, and I’ll keep that casket closed and even make him being in it seem more ambiguous to anyone who asks going forward even if I think it’s a mistake and not helping you in the long run at all, but he’s gonna be inside the casket when it goes in the ground, Bonnie.” I didn’t want her turning his corpse into her own personal Frankenstein’s monster. Should maybe consider staying away from her with the necromancer’s magic I was harboring too now that I thought about it.

Rudy’s voice came from above us as he answered for her. “You have our word. She’ll be getting the help she needs by tonight.”

It sounded final to me. Must’ve sounded that way to Bonnie too, because when she looked up, she was less sad than shocked. “Wait, tonight?!“ If she was expecting her Mom to side with her, then her Mom standing in what looked like a unified front her Dad indicated the opposite was going to happen as did the next words out of Rudy's mouth. “Your mother knows some witches who know how to treat this kind of thing. After you’ve said your goodbyes at the cemetery, she’ll give them a call, we’ll take you home so you can get some of your things, and then we’re taking you straight there.”

“You can’t just take me away from – “

Her Mom tried a slightly softer approach. “Bonnie, you have your whole life ahead of you. It may not seem like it, but this is for the best, and it won’t be forever. You’ll be back before you know it, and someday when you’re ready, you’ll find love again, but not if your life is cut short, and it will be if you don’t do something about this now. It’s only going to get worse now that you’re grieving.”

“I could work on the grieving first, and then . . . “

Someone tapped me on the shoulder in the midst of Bonnie’s bargaining that was going nowhere, and I looked up to see Matt. Holding his keys out to me, he said, “This has gone on long enough. Here . . . Check the back of my truck.”

Quickly getting to my feet, I took the keys with an awkward, “Thanks for returning him, I guess,” and sought out Damon in the group, who threw his eyes to the sky and started heading in the direction of the parking lot. On my way past Tyler, I stopped and leaned into him to whisper, “And you . . . Once again you’ve allowed yourself to go with the flow of what they wanted simply because it means you get to continue being laid, which means your judgement is compromised. Since I didn't explicitly say it the last time, I’m gonna go ahead and do it now: Going forward, you need to tell me any time any one of you starts to make plans like this without involving me. Are we clear?” His posture tightened at being spoken to that way, and then he briefly looked contrite before relenting with a slight nod. “Good, because you’re the only one I trust to do it.” He relaxed somewhat before giving me another little nod to let me know he’d do a better, and I left him thinking that maybe Klaus had been right. Wouldn’t be the first time, nor probably the last.

I met Damon next to Matt’s truck and slowed somewhat when I saw the tarp over the back. It kind of sucked, really, to be faced with having to pull that back for the big reveal when Jeremy should be in his coffin, which made it easier to accept that he was dead. “I keep forgetting that Rebekah got Matt a new truck.”

Damon flicked a look in my direction before realizing that I was a bit unsettled. “I can get him and put him back by myself . . . if you want.” 

I offered him a sad smile in response before looking at the tarp. Lifting it up a fraction, I sighed before tossing it back, and yeah just as I suspected, Jeremy looked like he’d simply crawled in here and passed out after prom with the suit he was wearing. Tilting my head to the side, while I appraised him, I finally shook my head and said, “They messed up his make up.” There were a few smudges that belied the fact that underneath he was way to pale to seem so alive. Extending my hand, I brushed his hair off his forehead and then looked at his suit. “And now his suit is dirty.”

“Can we finally admit that this experiment just hasn’t worked and get out of here?”

I tossed Damon a glance and then looked back down at Jeremy. “If Stefan’s all right with it, then how about we skip the New Year’s party at Klaus's, and leave until school starts back up again? I was thinking of maybe going back when it does.”

“Eve.”

“Yes, Damon?” 

My eyes flitted to him, and he tried not to smile at something I hadn’t done in a while. “At a certain point, you need to learn when to fold. I think that time has come.”

“But if I fold now, then how will I ever make them love me before I tell them to go fuck themselves at graduation?”

Exhaling a laugh, he argued, “Other than the telling them to go fuck themselves part, that isn’t you.”

“No, it’s Katherine, but she’s right. It would twist the knife a little deeper.”

“You’re not that vindictive, and you don’t know how to make people love you . . . okay, I love you, but you don’t know how to be appealing to even a handful of people.”

“I think I might be growing on them.”

“Eve, they stole Jeremy’s body, because they didn’t trust you to do the right thing with it . . . or what they wanted you to do with it, or . . . I don’t know. I honestly have no idea what the hell this Nancy Drew: Case of the Missing Corpse was all about other than you not having his remains being at the heart of it.”

“Pretty sure grief was at the heart of it, Damon. That’s why I’m not as upset as I probably should be about it.”

“So, you want to stay. Even this doesn’t change that. Is that what you’re saying?”

“I’m saying that the part I agree with Katherine on is that I should try to get what I want out of life more, and what I want is to finish out my education, walk across that stage, and feel like I’ve earned it. Then I want to go travelling with you for the summer . . . I was talking to Imelda, and I think I might have found a way to make it like a world class scavenger hunt . . . if you’re interested.”

“I thought I got to pick where we went next.”

“And you can. We just might need to make some stops along the way.” His eyebrow arched dubiously, and I quickly added, “It’s an evolving gift, and now it’ll be even better.“

“If Imelda is involved, will it be fun, or is she trying to kill me?”

“Fun. Obviously.”

“The only kind of fun you know how to have is dangerous.”

“Well, I hardly think my Blue-eyed Angel of Death is one to turn down that kind of fun either.”

“You’re not going to tell me why we’re doing it, are you?”

“For the journey of course . . . and the prize at the end, which is a surprise.”

“I hate surprises.”

“I was a surprise, and you don’t hate me.”

“In no way will any other surprise ever match up to that one. I’m good on surprises for life now.” That elicited a rather girlish grin out of me, and he looked away from me briefly with a shake of his head before saying, “Just tell me one thing. Is it really for me, or is it for you?”

Ooh, trick question. If it was for me, he’d do it. If it was for him, he’d question it more. “Well, I intend to make it the best summer of your life, so that’s for you, and the end result would be for both of us . . . okay, mainly me, but both of us too.”

Exhaling a laugh, he capitulated. “All right, fine . . . We’ll go out of town until the start of school, you can finish up with that, and then we’ll go do your scavenger hunt, but I am not simply going along for the ride. I will take the wheel if it looks like you’re about to crash.”

“Why would we crash?”

“Because you’re a terrible driver.”

“I’m a good driver.”

“I’m talking in metaphors here, and you know it.”

“And I still contend that I’m a good driver.”

“Who could do with an even better co-pilot.”

“Okay, we’re switching metaphors here. I mean I don’t know how to fly, so if I were to crash as a pilot, that would make sense, but – “ 

Touching his finger to my lips, he leaned down to say, “You know what I meant.”

I smiled, and he removed his hand before I said, “Then it’s a good thing my _co-driver_ is the best there is. We make a pretty good team.”

“The best.” His gaze flitted across my face before landing on my lips as he leaned back. “We should . . . “ His eyes darted to mine before he tilted his head towards Jeremy. 

With a sigh, I nodded. “Yeah.” Unlocking the truck tail door to make it easier to reach Jeremy, I added, “I’ll go make sure everyone else is gone and then get the doors for you,” and half-way to the side church entrance looked back time to catch Damon looking down at Jeremy with a fairly pensive expression. It was fleeting - gone by the time he looked up to see what I wanted.

They hadn’t exactly been close. Pretty sure Jeremy thought Damon was a dick, and Damon mostly thought of Jeremy as an annoyance that he’d even killed once, but that didn’t mean he wanted Jeremy dead. There’d been times where they’d been able to team up against various threats, like Katherine, and Damon did help train him. Those were bonding experiences, and yet that one thoughtful look was all he'd allowed himself to have around me, or was it the only moment he'd allowed himself to have at all?

It made me think about how sometimes when people die, it's possible to feel like you weren't entitled to grieve for them, because there were others who held more of a claim to it. Or maybe I was just projecting, because that’s where I was with Jeremy, like I knew had nowhere near the claim to grieve him that Elena did or Bonnie, or maybe even the others too, but I sort of figured that meant that it was my job to see days like today through for those who might need to cry and shut down and set things on fire or steal corpses instead of having to deal with the formalities of death. That might be what I thought, but if I let myself do it, I still felt the loss in a pretty significant way.

Then there was Damon. He was my support system, a support system who was just as bad as I was when it came to wanting to distance himself from things like this, and he'd been great about giving me the space I needed while also being there if and when I needed him to be. He'd done it again just now by helping me take my mind off of finding Jeremy's body in the back of a truck. Hell, I hadn't even had to ask him to help with the body. He'd just known that's what I wanted when he saw me looking for him, and then when we got here, he'd offered to take care of it for me, but that didn't mean he was immune from feeling anything about it. 

Did I return the favor, or was I all take, take, take? It's possible I helped him in ways that I didn't realize by letting him help me and by not wanting to talk about it all the time, but I was also learning that grief could make you selfish sometimes, so I wasn't sure if that was the right way to look at it. Maybe I should make a more concerted effort. “Hey, do you have any ideas where we should go . . . for New Years?”

“Well that depends. Do you want a Big Times Square spectacle or the lake house kind of quiet?”

This year? “Uh, not the lake house, but somewhere like it, someplace new?”

The idea of something new seemed to intrigue him. “What about – “

“Skiing? Because I’ve never done that, and I’d love to try it.”

Breathing out a laugh, he asked, “Why’d you ask me what ideas I had if you already knew what you wanted to do?”

“I didn’t know. I was suddenly struck by inspiration and just blurted it out, so now it’s more of a brainstorming session.”

“Well, since we’re brainstorming, I’ll say yes to a ski chalet for the two of us. No to the skiing.”

“Snowboarding?” He smirked, and I quickly said, “We are not spending the entire time inside!”

“I think you’ll change your mind when we get there.”

“Nope.”

“Challenge accepted.” If the devilish grin he gave me after that was any indication, I might be in trouble, or maybe not. Whatever we decided to do would be exactly what we needed to do, and either way I’d most likely be coming back with a new skill of some kind.


	80. Back to Reality

There was a knock on my door, and I turned away from the duffel bag I was unpacking to open it. Hm. It’d been a while since he came knocking on this door. “Hey, Stefan.”

“Uh, hey, so . . . you’re back?”

Well, I was standing here in front of him, wasn't I? “Am I supposed to answer that, or . . . “

Briefly looking down with a little nod, like he was kicking himself for walking into that one, he then looked at me with something of a sardonic smile before saying, “Great. She’s all yours,” turned to walk back down the hall, and I immediately went to chase after him.

“Wait! How bad has it been? I mean, what am I looking at here?”

Stopping to look down at me, he expressed some mild regret for how he'd handled that and sighed. “It hasn’t been easy, but that probably has more to do with me than her.”

Because she was so different that it was like another twin had dropped in out of nowhere to infiltrate their lives? “I get that . . . I haven’t handled it anywhere close to the way I think I should or thought I would considering her personality make over is kind of my fault.”

“Actually, I’d say it was Damon's . . . not that I can blame him. You didn’t seriously think we were all going to just stand around and let her beat you to death, did you?”

“Uh, yeah, I did . . . and I’m still not convinced she would have killed me. You weren’t there when we were locked in her house, but we fought a lot that first day, and it wasn’t all me. She threw her fair share of punches too because I bring it out in her, and she may not love me like a sister, but I’m also all she has left. So it might have come close, but I just don’t think she would have killed me any more than I killed her when I staked her.”

“That’s still a pretty big gamble to take.”

“I don’t place bets I know I won’t win.”

“Or you meant it when you said you thought you had it coming.”

“Possibly.”

At my concession, he ducked his head with a little nod before asking, “So, how was your trip? Do you think the time away helped?”

Grieving was a process, so it’s not like it was gone or anything, but I felt a lot better overall than I did before we left. Smiling brightly, I answered, “It was exactly what was needed,” and he relaxed, like if something good had come out of his burden, he was okay with that.

Turning to start casually walking down the hall with me, he remarked, “Damon seems happy.”

“I’m sure he does. It was exactly what he needed too. That’s kind of the great thing about being human. There’s only so many times that it is humanly possible to – “

“You know, I really don’t need to know – “

“About skiing? Okay, so then let me tell you about the sex, because – “

“Oh my god.” He laughed before picking up his pace. “You know that’s not what I was saying! How was the skiing?”

“Really difficult at first, but I felt confident enough by the end of the first day to try a black diamond. It was amazing.”

“Yeah?” I nodded excitedly, and he said, “And Damon was fine with – “

“Oh, no. He was being all super speciesist about humans having slower reflexes and the trees and turns and not thinking I was ready, so I had to get on the ski lift without him knowing, and then when I saw him on the ground looking for me, I felt a little bad about disappearing on him, so I got his attention and waved. The look on his face was priceless, and so was watching him scramble to get the next chairlift he could, because it’s not like vampires can go much faster than a human when their feet are strapped to skis.” Stefan laughed, and I said, “And him chasing me back down the mountain made it that much easier for me to do, so I decided to go again, and it became the best game of tag ever . . . that he didn’t necessarily know he was playing until he decided to just stay at the top the third time around to catch me on my way back up, and then I got to chase him.“ Stefan laughed again, and I added, “But really there’s only so many times that it's humanly possible to keep doing those trips up and down a mountain when it’s getting dark before you have to go back to your chalet, and – “

“All right. Let’s leave it there.”

“Okay, but it was really some of the most mind blowing – “

“Eve!”

“Food that I have had in as long as I can remember.”

Stopping, he covered his face with his hand before chuckling. “I hate you so much right now.”

“Then all is right in the world.”

Exhaling another laugh, he dropped his hand before looking at me. “And oddly enough I’m still glad the two of you are back. So, are you ready for your big day tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure. How many of my classes are you going to be in this semester?”

“Any you want except band?”

Okay, that surprised me. We were getting along okay because I'd gotten away from them for a little while to regroup, and we were supposed to be working on the Elena project together, but I hadn't exactly been upholding my side of the partnership, so I think I'd be annoyed with me if I were him, and it isn't like I'd been the kindest, most benevolent person to him before Elena flipped her switch. “Really?”

“If knowing someone in your classes makes it easier for you to attend, then sure, and between you and Caroline, I think all of Elena’s other classes are covered, except that period, not that I really want to go to band anyway.”

Uh huh . . . So, he wanted to go to all my classes bar one to help me feel more comfortable at school? Nah. Maybe because he'd stayed here, he was still stuck on the other side of an invisible wall I'd be behind too if I hadn't been able to get out of here for a while, and being behind that wall meant being confronted by the losses more. His losses ranged from Elena to Alice and probably even Jeremy, and maybe stewing in those losses without any distractions had made him lonely to the point that he could do with some of those conversations with me that he'd said he missed at the convention. Well, all right. If this was really a cry for help, I wasn't going to turn my back on him. “I'll get you my schedule later, and it's really for the best about band. You’re hilariously bad at it whether your humanity is on or off.”

“Speaking of which . . . She wants you to take her shopping.”

“What?”

“That’s why I came to get you.”

“Oh . . . so, I guess this is happening now?”

Walking down the steps from the other side of the house, Damon met us wearing a fresh change of clothes. “Hey, did you tell him about – “

Throwing his hands in the air, Stefan walked off yelling, “I don’t want to hear it,” and Damon looked at me in confusion. 

I gave him an impish grin before explaining. “He thinks you were going to talk about sex.” 

Damon’s expression morphed to impressed. “You were messing with him.”

“Mmhmm.”

With a smirk, he pulled me into his arms saying, “Did you tell him how hot it was?”

“We were snow skiing. Pretty sure it was cold.”

“Well if you need a reminder – “ 

HIs mouth landed over mine, and I had little to no notice before I found myself stumbling back against a wall as he pushed me into the nearest hard surface he could find. It could be said that both of us had gotten a little used to being able to do this whenever we wanted in that chalet. Air? Who needed that? I didn’t plan on coming up for it any time soon. My leg hooked around the back of his to pull him closer, and his hand slid under my thigh to lift it to his waist as he pressed against me. A soft gasp escaped my lips, and there was a fairly annoyed, “Ugh, come on, guys, seriously?! You just got back. You know what? Do whatever, I’m going out,” from Stefan somewhere behind Damon.

Pulling back from Damon, I quickly yelled, “No, wait!”

Smiling to himself, Damon slowly let my leg drop, and I sheepishly looked around him, because despite my teasing of Stefan, I never talked about sex with anyone other than Damon or Alice, and while Stefan’s amusing reaction had been worth me stepping outside my comfort zone, I felt fairly compromised at the moment. It really wasn’t like me to lose myself out in public . . . on the other hand, I was actually kind of happy and in a good mood for once, so maybe I should let myself off the hook just this once, and so should Stefan. He'd stopped, but he was still pointed in the direction of the front door looking as annoyed as he'd sounded. “The number of times I’ve had to hear both Elena and Rebekah from your room, and you can’t handle a little kissing without flipping out about it?“

Turning to look at me, he argued, “The point is, I kept it in my room. I don’t want images in my head that I will literally never be able to forget. It’s disturbing.”

Without missing a beat, I innocently asked, “Is that what we're calling expressions of love now? Disturbing."

Growing more awkward by the second, he flicked his hand in the direction of Damon saying, "No, but he's my brother. I don't want to see - "

"You mean in all the time you two have been alive, you've never seen your brother with - "

His eyes finally narrowed, and he cut me off by saying, "No, you're right. It's just you I find gross."

I was starting to think that my ability to bring out the jerk in Stefan was a talent not to be wasted, because that guy was kind of funny, or I thought he was. I noticed Elena as she stepped out of the living room, and her timing couldn't have been better. “Did you hear that, Elena? He thinks we’re gross.”

Giving Stefan an scrutenizing look, she replied, “Well, I think he’s . . . blushing.” Looking back at me, she smirked. “Nice job, sis.”

“Uhh . . . “ Okay, now it was my turn to be slightly weirded out by someone who looked like me. Turning my attention back to Stefan, I attempted to brush it off by finally getting around to telling him why I’d stopped him. “So what Damon actually wanted to know if I’d told you was, um, while we were away, he taught me a few Italian dishes that he said you liked, so we were thinking of making them for you for dinner sometime this week . . . to show our appreciation for everything you’ve done lately.” 

Stefan looked from me to Damon, like he was waiting for the punchline, and Damon shrugged. Turning his attention back to me, Stefan asked, “This was your idea?” That time I shrugged. It had been, but Damon had been fully on board with it, just not necessarily for the reason I was. He liked doing normal things with me, and he wanted show off the fruits of that labour, but Stefan didn’t need to know that. “All right. Yeah, okay, that’d be good. Is tomorrow okay? We could use it to celebrate the first day back.”

I looked up to Damon to see what he thought. “Sure. I can get what we need tomorrow while you’re out.”

Elena responded with a fairly droll, “Great. Now that, that’s decided, can we go?” and unaware of what she was talking about, Damon shot back, “And where will we be going?”

“You’re not invited.” Coming up to grab my wrist, so she could extract me from him, Elena added, “You’ve gotten far more than your fair share of her lately.”

He dryly repeated back, “Fair share,” like there was no so such thing, and tugging me away from him, she spelled out what was obvious to her for him. 

“Well, she is my sister, so any time you spend with her is time I allow you to have, because I am sharing her with you.”

Okay, one, never had she sounded more like my Mom than just now. Two, what the fuck was happening? The bizarreness of it all meant that I allowed her to pull me towards the door, but still looked back at Stefan for some kind of explanation, because he’s the one who had spent the most time with her of late, and apparently, it was his turn to shrug. Not at all happy with the direction things had gone, Damon sped in front of Elena, and towering over her, said, “There is no sharing here. You’re bad for her. In fact, I don’t want you spending time with her at all.”

Looking up at him, she nodded in faux-understanding before retorting, “That sounds like more of a you problem than a me problem,” and then proceeded to side-step him, so she could drag me around him. 

Again, my attention went back to Stefan, and his entire posture shifted into one that was more alert as what she’d said dawned on him. He quickly shared a look with Damon before feeling the need to reiterate what his brother had said. “He told you he didn’t want you spending time with her.”

As we got to the door, she tossed back, “And why should I care what he wants? We’re going shopping. We’ll be back when we’re back,” and as she opened the door, Damon took a step forward, but I put my free hand up to stop him. It’s obvious that the sire bond had no power over her at the moment. Whether that’d been broken for good or not, I didn’t know, but I was interested to see where this was going. Maybe she thought I’d be easier to get away from than Stefan, but I wouldn’t be as long as I was ready for her to try it. Maybe she just genuinely wanted to go shopping and needed a personal assistant. Either way, I should probably start getting to know the new her a bit better, so I could do a better job of counteracting any moves she might make going forward.

The second the door closed behind us, she said, “I was thinking about changing my hair.”

“Okay.”

Apparently, we were taking my car, because that’s where she was heading as she said, “Like the purple is great and all, but I was thinking red, so I could put my own spin on it . . . and a different cut. You should get one too . . . You might have been right about going a bit shorter. How about a cut like Kate Beckinsale in Underworld? I know she was a vampire, but I think a similar long bob would suit your whole vampire hunter image too. No bangs.”

“Yeah, absolutely no to the bangs.”

“Then it’s decided, and I’m going to keep my hair long, but get layers.” I gave her a cautious look as I opened the driver’s side door. Going around to the other side, she paused after catching a glimpse of me when she opened her own door. “What?”

“Well, I mean, on a completely cerebral level, you have to know this is a bit odd, right?”

She considered it. “It is out of the ordinary.” Looking back at me, she got her shrug in as well. “We don’t have to be enemies, Eve. In fact, I’d be an idiot to make you one. You’re a completely undervalued asset around here. I mean, you’re on the council, so you could get them to stop putting vervain in the water supply.”

Undervalued asset? Flattery would get her nowhere with me. “Yeah, not happening.”

“We’ll talk about it.”

“If by talk about it, you mean attempting to strong arm me in any way by threatening and/or harming others or me, then I will put you down, hide you where nobody can find you, dry you out until you fucking desiccate, and only after 5 years of you being in time out will I give you the opportunity to have a discussion about flipping your humanity back on again, which you will agree to if you want to get back out into the world, or it'll be another 5 years.”

“Okay, so maybe we won’t talk about it. How about going out of town to play one of your games? Good Vampire, Bad Hunter is exactly the kind of fun I’m looking for right now.”

“Since I suspect that what you’re intending to do with the game is turn it into what it was originally conceived to be as a fang blocking game, it should probably be called Bad Vampire, Good Hunter.”

“That isn’t a no.”

“It’s an ‘I’ll think about it.’”

“What’s to think about?”

The morality of it. I’d still rather be bitten than compelled, but her doing either right now might not be the best idea. On the other hand, competition did have a tendency to bring out a whole host of emotions. Hm. “The rules.”

“No rules.”

“Rules are what makes it difficult for both of us, and the difficulty is what makes it fun.” 

With an expression that said she could live with that, she gave me a nod before getting into the car, and only after she had, did I follow suit. Didn’t want her taking off on me while I was already in there, or I’d never catch her. I closed my door, and she said, “For clothes, I’m thinking of switching things up a bit, so I need someone who will tell me what honestly looks good without telling me what to wear the way Caroline does.”

“Well, if honesty is what you want . . .“

"I just can’t stand her most of the time."

"Caroline?"

"She’s so annoying. In fact, I think I want to knock her down a peg or two at school, so how’s that for honesty?”

“Missing the flair and depth of my honesty, but it’s not like that isn’t an obvious truth with the looks you give her sometimes even when your humanity is on, so who am I to argue with it . . . I’m just not going to let you bully her anywhere including school.”

“Who said anything about bullying her?”

“Whatever you’re thinking is definitely going to involve bullying, Elena, and what is the deal with people targeting Caroline anyway?” Rebekah had done the same thing even with her humanity being fully intact.

“She’s unlikable, for one, and why should she get to be the queen of the school?”

“I’m not sure I’d call her the queen of the school. She’s got a very small number of friends if you think about it.”

“But she’s the head of every committee she’s on.”

“Because she’s controlling and confident and puts herself in charge of those committees.”

“Exactly – unlikable, but she still managed to be elected captain of the cheerleading squad, and it’s the same with everything else she does. She can’t just put herself in charge if nobody lets her. Just because you don’t care enough about it to be aware of the social hierarchy doesn’t mean it isn't there. The rest of the school is always kissing her ass and wishing they were her when she walks by them in the hallways. And is it really bullying if I just simply surpass her?"

"Ah, so your inner murdering toddler wants a tiara, does she?"

"I don't want anything. It's just something to do right now."

“Oh, good. You were getting dangerously close to being ambitious there for a minute.”

“Even if I were, ambition is not an emotion. It's a mental state of being that says, 'I'm going to take that by any means necessary.' It has nothing to do with emotions.”

“Except the intitial desire or hope for that which you want to take, happiness if you win, and anger or disappointment if you fail.”

“Not if I don’t care if she actually loses anything as long as she suffers for a least a little while.”

“And you think bullying won’t be involved.”

“I think, I’m not going to let having you as a sister sink my chances of succeeding. I’m pulling you up with me.”

“Hence the second peg she’ll be knocked down.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s not happening, Elena.”

“You don’t even need to change your clothes. They’re okay.”

“So, just the hair.”

“Now, you’re getting it.”

“Long plan in the making, then?”

“She stopped by yesterday to check on me and Stefan. I came up with it then. Oh, and I need you to join the cheerleading squad again. You won’t send anyone to hell just by touching them unless you’re also killing them.”

“I could be marking them for future hell treatment though.” No skin on skin contact for me unless it was with a supernatural vampire hunter, vampire, hybrid, doppelganger, and who knew about werewolves? I wasn’t willing to touch witches or humans, the same two beings who had been susceptible to the demon die. Even with Bonnie in the cave, I’d been wearing gloves and long sleeves and gloves again at the funeral. 

“Not if you tell the curse what the rules are ahead of time, and even if that doesn’t work, you’ll just be marking the first one you touch, right?” I shot a side-glance in her direction, and she sighed. “Then tell Caroline that you just want to stick with tumbling, and if you have to do stunts, then you only want to do them with her. It’ll it be fine. All their practices are inside at this time of year, so it isn’t like you’re going to melt in the sun.”

“Actually, why is there cheering this time of year?”

“Competitions and basketball, mostly.”

“Basketball? I’m really more of a football kind of girl, so even if our team was terrible, it was at least tolerable then.”

“You’re doing it.”

No, I fucking wasn’t, and I wasn’t helping her with the bullshit, trivial plans of school domination that she was enacting to spite Caroline either. She didn’t need to know that though. As long as it didn’t look like I was getting in her way, then she’d hopefully leave me alone, and I could keep her from doing too much damage with her stupid plans. “How about no to cheerleading, and yes to a parkour club? I could get Tyler to join and Matt and maybe some of their teammates?"

Sitting back, she mulled it over. “Starting a club with football players . . . Include girls who didn’t make it on the cheerleading squad because Caroline cut them at try outs, and I think that might work.” Yeah, no, I wasn't doing that either unless they wanted to join because parkour is something they wanted to do, and she'd better not bully any of them into it either. I really only needed enough people to join it to have it qualify as an official school club, so I could add it to the college applications I'd looked at while I was away with Damon. Other than that, I'd mainly thought it would be fun and good training to supplement the jo staff training and normal hunter training I did, but thinking about it now, I may have been a bit hasty in thinking I could pull it off without any drama in Mystic Falls.


	81. A Fly on the Wall

Damon had just gotten home with the shopping for the dinner, so I was helping him empty the bags when he asked the dreaded question. “How did it go today?”

“Uh . . . “ How did I answer that one? “Better than the last first day of school I had?”

“An incredibly low bar, so how did it really go?”

“The classes themselves were fine . . . if you don’t count my first teacher of the day being concerned about the pallor of my skin and wanting to send me home. I assured her that I was fine, but I still had to go to the nurse, and I wouldn’t let her check me over, because I didn’t want her touching me, so I had her talk to Meredith, who told her I could go back to class if I wanted. When I went back to class, I got to sit in the back corner away from the windows the way I was supposed to do if the blinds weren’t closed, but they were, and nobody was allowed to sit around me because of the whole autoimmune excuse I gave last semester. My teacher didn’t want any of the other kids making me sick, which on the one hand was okay, because it meant I couldn't make anyone around me cold, but on the other hand, it was the kind of isolation that made me stand out more to the other students."

"Then in second period, I again had to go to the nurse’s office, and that time, she gave me a note saying she’d spoken to my doctor, and I was fit to attend class, a note, I then had to produce for every class except band, and the seating arrangement was the same in all those classes too, so I’m sure the teachers were talking amongst themselves between classes. I think Stefan may have had a word with each of them after class, because we live together, so it might be different tomorrow if he’s allowed sit somewhere around me. Elena’s living here too, so I suspect she’ll want to as well.”

“Was it the stress of being there making your curse act up or something else?”

“I may have forgotten what being in a crowded environment is like and having more attention drawn on me by being singled out certainly didn’t help.”

With the shopping laid out on the counter, Damon got out the chopping boards, one for each of us. “But it wasn't just that, was it? Something had to set you off to make the first teacher of the day want to send you home, and it was cloudy this morning, so don’t even think about trying to blame the sun.”

Putting on some gloves, I answered, “You’re good.”

He handed me the carrots and picked up an onion saying, “I have to be with you . . . and you still haven’t answered the question.”

I reached for one of the knives in the stand and sighed. “Well . . . there were a lot of little things throughout the day that just sort of helped keep it going.” Every time I felt like was finally starting to level out, something else would happen.

“Such as?”

“Such as Elena threading her arm through mine the second we got through the doors and parading me through the halls as her sister.”

He paused in his peeling of an onion to think about it and said, "Something she should have done last time,” before flicking a glance in my direction.

“I didn't want the attention then or now.”

“It sounds like it was a statement, like this is my sister, accept her the way you do me, and I’m guessing there was a hint of ‘and if you don’t, heads are gonna roll,’ to it too, since her humanity is off.”

“Yeah, kinda.”

“So what does she want? Because I’m not buying this whole busying herself by targeting Caroline’s position in the school.”

“I still think she might be trying to butter me up, so I’ll get the council to stop putting vervain in the water supply, or take her out of town to play Bad Vampire, Good Hunter, and today she brought up the idea of maybe having me show her what Mom used to do to find the predators she targeted.”

“Something else she knows you’d be okay with to some degree, but she doesn’t care about what you think is right or wrong, so again, what does she really want?”

Other than someone who might be willing to negotiate with her in a moral grey area when nobody else around here would? “Caroline has a theory.”

Knowing the answer, he asked, "You didn't tell her that Elena’s coming for her, did you?”

“To not tell her would be the same as me seeing a hunter lining her up in his or her sights and not telling her to duck. I thought she should have a heads up about it, so yeah, I told her.”

“And judging by the way the temperature has dropped 10 degrees in the last 5 seconds, I’m guessing that was another contributing factor to the overall stress of the day.”

“Yeah, she was actually a bigger problem for me today than Elena was.”

“Because she wants you to take her side.”

“There were a few things, actually, but that was one of them. There are no sides as far as I’m concerned. Elena doesn’t have one, because there’s no conviction on her part. Obviously, I’m not going to let her harm Caroline or ruin Caroline’s life, but other than that, what else can I do? You can’t argue with someone who has no interest in having an argument or even in seeing their agenda through. You can maybe reason with them if you can explain why something they're thinking about doing would go against their own best interest, the way I did when I told her what was going to happen if she tried to force me to do her bidding on the council, but I can’t go around saying the same thing for every petty thing she does, or it will lose its meaning. I think it’s better to stand back, see what she does, stop it from going too far, and then give her a reason not to do it again.”

“An excellent way to get her to want to take you out of the picture entirely when all she sees you as is a road block to getting what she wants.”

“Except, I think Caroline’s theory might have some merit. She thinks that Elena is cozying up to me, because my determination has a proven track record, and if she can act like the sister she thinks I want with her switch off, then – “

“You’ll do whatever it takes to keep it off when everyone else wants her to turn it back on.”

“Basically.”

“An undervalued asset.”

“Yep.”

“But you’d never fall for that.”

“Apparently, I already have according to Caroline.”

“Hence your ghostly complexion.”

“Well that, the overall school environment, the singling out, and . . . arguing with Caroline about what to do about Bonnie.”

“I thought she was with those witches.”

“She is. I guess she found a phone and called Caroline last night in a panic. They’ve said they’re going to wait to do the ritual until she agrees to it, because as Alice said, it could kill her if she doesn’t do it willingly, and it’s actually dangerous for them to try it too. So far, they’ve kept their word on waiting until Bonnie is ready, but Bonnie feels like they’ve put a time limit on it. She doesn’t know how long it is. Could be the next full moon. Could be the one after that or some other celestial event to boost their power, but whenever it is, she thinks that whether she agrees to it or not, they’re going to do it by then. Since I’ve been to where she presumably is, Caroline wanted me to either give her the address or go get Bonnie myself.”

“Yeah, if they’re willing to kill one of their own, then you’re not going anywhere near those witches with that curse of yours, especially if she or Imelda told them anything about it. How do we even know that Bonnie calling wasn’t to lure you there in exchange for her freedom? Seems awfully convenient that she’d suddenly find a phone the same night we came back into town.”

He had a point about the timing of it. I hadn’t considered that. There was one thing that seemed to go against it being a plot to get me there though. “The first thing Caroline asked for was the address.”

“So, you’re the one who suggested you going.”

Maybe. “It may have been less of a suggestion and more like ‘if anyone is going, it’ll be me.’ I’m not sure how they’re keeping her there, because Bonnie should be able to get away from them with Expression, but if she can’t, then maybe there’s some kind of advanced magic at play. It might just be an issue because even though she’s powerful, Bonnie lacks the experience to get around it, or it could be because together as a coven, they actually do match her in power, and if that's the case, then I don’t want Caroline or any other vampires – “

“Meaning me.”

With a nod, I said, “Meaning you. I don’t want any of you walking up on their doorstep, but I need to think about what the right thing to do is, because I’m just not sure.”

Having finished peeling all the carrots, I started chopping them and said, “Bonnie’s addicted to the power, like it’s a drug, so she could be saying anything she has to say to keep it and get brought home, but even though Aja was on Imelda’s list of witches who could help and was a friend of Abby’s, I wouldn’t put it past them to kill Bonnie. Expression is seen as one of the worst crimes in the witching world. I’m not sure that it matters to them if Bonnie was tricked into it . . . I mean it matters to the extent that they’ve been patient so far, but if it’s between her leaving there alive with Expression and her dying, then they will go with option B, and I’m not sure how long they’ll continue to be patient. Bonnie could be right. She might be running out of time.”

“If she is, then it’s because she isn’t letting them get rid of it. If she had, then she’d be home by now.”

“I know . . . You’re right, but she’s supposed to be there to get help, and if their idea of helping her is killing her, then – “

“What did you expect? We’re talking about witches here?”

“For her to be less stubborn, I guess.”

“Have you met Bonnie Bennett?”

“Silly me. I guess my hope just springs eternal.”

“Except for now when you think they’re going to kill her.”

“Or she’ll kill them.” He glanced at me, and I lifted a shoulder before wiping off my knife and pushing the carrots to the side of my chopping board to make way for the celery. “If she does, it’d put an end to whatever spells they’ve cast. No need to match their experience levels in magic. It’s what I’d do as a non-witch.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t even have to think about it.”

Taking the celery to the sink, so I could try to rinse it without getting my gloves wet, I said, “But this is Bonnie. She went through a deeply distressing experience and lost her first love and her best friend's little brother without being able to do anything to stop it. She’s willing to suffer through how that makes her feel away from friends and family because not killing any of the witches keeping her means that much to her, but one thing she won't suffer is losing – “

“The only way she has to bring him back.”

Placing the celery on some towels to dry, I brought it back to my chopping board and nodded. “Exactly. As long as she has Expression, he's less dead in her mind and more in need of being saved, so if they try to cleanse her of Expression by force, then I can see her losing control and being the one to kill them. It won’t do anything as far as completing the Expression triangle is concerned, because they’re too far away for it to be an equilateral triangle, but I can’t imagine that someone like her, who has a strong moral code and who has only ever just killed me, and temporarily at that, will be able to cope with permanently killing 12 people, no matter what the circumstances surrounding it are, so when she gets free, her Expression is going to be even more of a problem than it already is . . . Maybe grief counselling and setting up supervised sessions with Professor Snake to try and get him to close the door he opened in increments would be better . . . But then her parents are both saying she has to stay where she is for the time being.”

“You called them?” I nodded, and Damon said, “Then why don’t we let them deal with it?”

“Because I was the one saying get her into witch rehab STAT, and it may not have been the best idea, because witches suck.”

“Yeah, they do, and if they don’t just decide to eliminate the problem of the living necromancer’s talisman the second they see you, here’s the first thing they’ll say when you knock on their door, ‘This is witch business. It’s got nothing to do with you.’ If she kills them or they kill her, who cares? None of them care about what happens to you.”

“I don’t do the things I do because I care if the people I’m helping care about what happens to me.”

Leaning over to look at me, his eyes briefly widened as he said, “I know,” before he grabbed the tomatoes on the other side of me and added, “It’s aggravating.”

“It’d make me an emotional mercenary of some kind, like I expect some kind of a quid pro quo for services rendered.” 

“Wait, is that why you get all weird in the off-chance that anyone around here thanks you? Do you seriously consider that some kind of payment?”

“You should hear my thoughts on the word, ‘please.’”

With a slight smile, he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye before slicing through the tomato in front of him. “If you’ve called her parents, have you thought about calling this Aja? You have her number.”

“I’ve thought about it, but I’m not sure how honest she’ll be. I’d rather check in person to see for myself.”

“If you don't trust them to be honest over the phone, what makes you think it'll be any different if you're there in person?"

“I was thinking that a fly on the wall approach would the best way to get an accurate picture of what’s really happening.”

“So, you want to spy on them from a distance." I nodded, and he said, "Then you won’t have a problem if I’m there too.”

“If that means you’re parked in a car a mile or two up the road, then fine, but you aren’t getting any closer than that. Who knows what kinds of supernatural alarm systems you will set off?”

“And you won’t?”

“I have my pin that can hide an Original. I’ll think I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t like it.”

Leaning over to look up at him, I smugly retorted, “I know,” before going back to my celery, and he asked, “So, when are we doing this welfare check?”

“The next full moon is a little over a week and a half away.”

Muttering, Damon said, “Because it makes the most sense to you to be there on the night you think double, double toil and trouble is most likely to be brewing, and not say, the day before or even this weekend.”

“It is the best time to be there. Even if they’re planning to do something on the night of the full moon, they’re not going to act like it until it happens. They’ll still be on their best behaviour. If nothing happens that night, I’ll leave her where she is, keep an eye out for any other celestial events that might occur over the month, and if none do, go back again for the next full moon.”

“And what about school?”

“If you’re driving, I can sleep in the car. It shouldn’t be a problem.” 

His head snapped in my direction, like he thought I’d agreed him into going along for that reason, and that reason alone. He might not be wrong. I grinned, and it prompted him to say, “Got it all worked out, then?”

“Nope, but I’m getting there. This chat has been most helpful.”

Relaxing with a shake of his head, his attention returned to his tomatoes, as he said, “Yeah, well, when is Operation Keep Tyler Occupied starting? Between that, school, your extra-curricular researching, your witchy fashion design project, and most importantly me, it might be enough to keep you finding trouble down to once a month.”

That research wasn’t one to be underestimated. Not only did I want to look more into Silas, psychics, and doppelgangers, but I also wanted to put something together for Tyler's graduation. I really needed him to keep himself occupied with things that did not include Klaus while I was away for the summer, and I think if I could pull my idea off, it might work, but I needed to get started on it soon if I wanted to give it to him on time. On top of all that, my curse needed some attention. I’d been far too passive by letting Imelda deal with it on her own. 

She’d been a bit of an unsung hero with it, actually, braving the world and going from one witching expert to another. It helped her build and strengthen alliances within the witching community, something she could have done years ago if she’d been able to do it, but now she was forcing herself to do it to help me, so at least she was getting something out of it, which made me feel a little better about her doing it on my behalf. I still wanted to do something nice for her though, hence the cloak I was going to give her. I had how I wanted it to look in my head. It needed a bit of Imelda flair added to it with things like patches dotting the black heavy fabric to give it some colour, and I was going to add internal pockets for her to put her herbs and things into to make it functional too. I did have a busy few months ahead of me.

“I said I’d give him a month with his drum instructor before we start up practicing with the band, and I showed him some videos today of parkour. He’s on board, so he’s gonna help with recruitment and setting the gym up with me after school tomorrow for the call out, but with Elena, I’m thinking the best you’ll get is me finding trouble at a minimum of once a week.” He glanced at me over his shoulder, realized the truth of that, and his eyes briefly darted to the ceiling in annoyance before they made their way back down to his chopping board. “Whatever. You love that I keep you on your toes.”

“No, what I love is you. Case in point - you haven’t found trouble once in the last 15 minutes, and I’ve loved every second of just being here with you.” 

I looked at him over my shoulder, and he seemed quite pleased with himself for that one. With a shake of my head, I focused on dicing the celery and attempted to not to smile. “So cheesy.”

“I think you mean endearing.”

That he continued trying with his romantic sentiments no matter how many times I’d shot them down was certainly something. Smiling briefly to myself, I wiped my knife clean saying, “That too.”


	82. You Can't Fight the World

Pushing the screen I’d gotten permission to use through the halls, I waited for Tyler to open a door for me as he said, “Yeah, no, it was good. I just wasn’t expecting there to be homework.”

“I wouldn’t call it homework, but it takes practice to be good at something. You had football practice after school, right? Same thing.”

“But at least with that, there were coaches there to run drills and tell us what plays to practice.”

“And with this you’re expected to find the self-motivation to get better on your own from one week to the next?”

“Yeah, and even then, there’s no way I’m ever going to be as good as that guy.”

“You know he’s only a couple years older than you, right?” 

He looked back at me as I rolled the screen through the opened doorway. “And he went to this school?”

Mystic Falls wasn’t exactly filled with music tutors, particularly for the drums, and nobody currently going to this school would work with him, nor would anyone who’d gone here since he'd started his reign of terror, which included seniors when he was a freshman. It was one of them who had given me this guy’s number. Anyone older than that wasn’t giving lessons or had done the smart thing and moved out of the area. I mumbled, “Uh, I think he went to Central High,” but not well enough for him not to have heard what I said.

“He was a Lion?! No way. I am not taking lessons – “

“Yes, you are.”

“Eve, they’re our main rivals!”

“So? I know it’s hard to believe, but high school rivalries just don’t matter that much, and it isn’t like he was an actual rival of yours. The only time he was on a football field was when he was marching across it with the drumline.”

“Why can’t someone from our drumline give me lessons?”

“Because none of them would work with you, tough guy. Besides, before you knew where he went, you said he was way cooler than you thought he’d be, and isn’t it better this way? You said you didn’t want anyone knowing that you were learning the drums until you can impress them at the end of year party. If he isn’t from Mystic Falls, then who is he going to tell in town about the lessons?”

“What about this drum pad thing he wants me to buy to work on my technique? He said it’s portable, so if I get bored in class, I can just sit in the back and play. That’s what he said he used to do.”

“Well, you don’t have to sit in the back of your classes and play it if you don’t want.”

“But I get bored, like all the time.”

“So, do you want to play in class or not? I’m confused.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But only if I’m good. If I’m good, it’ll be badass. If I suck, then I’ll look like an idiot in front of everyone.”

“Well, then let’s mark one in the column for why you should practice.”

“Fair enough.” Going to get the door to the gym for me, he asked, “So, do you know where I can get one of those?”

Wheeling the screen into the gym, I clarified, “A drum pad?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure. I’ll take you after we’re done here. And we’re sticking with him for now, right?” I’d already agreed to pay the guy for 3 months.

“Uh, yeah, I guess.” 

“Good . . . Just don’t let Elena know he’s from out of town, or she’ll put him on her menu.” We came around the side of the bleachers and both of us stopped when the open bleachers on the far side of the gym came into view. I’d thought it’d been a little noisy in here, but it hadn’t really registered beyond me assuming that it had something to do with the cheerleading practice that was supposed to be going on in here too. I couldn’t have been more wrong. “Is there some kind of an after school assembly going on today?”

“Not that I heard.”

Crossing my arms over my chest, I looked at the bleachers to assess what I was up against here. “You don’t really think – “

Seeming almost as perplexed as I felt, Tyler answered, “Uh, yeah . . . I invited them.” He nodded to a group of about 7 guys I didn’t know and Matt. The eight of them plus the two of us would give us the 10 we needed to make this a club – providing their parents all signed whatever documents were in the packets that the principal had said would need to be filled out for each person. That didn’t explain what seemed like half the school sitting over there. It was probably less, but it sure felt like a lot. 

“Do you know any of the rest?”

“Probably about as well as you do – enough to recognize them in the halls maybe, but outside of that? Not really . . . Looks like maybe your idea was more popular than you thought.”

But I hadn’t even put any posters up for this or done advertising of any kind. I’d relied solely on Tyler doing the recruitment drive, and if he only invited those 8 guys over there, then I doubted very much that they’d spread it outside their little group. I saw Rebekah and April come waltzing in through one of the doors along the side and tossed a glance over to where the cheerleaders were practicing. Elena had apparently decided to join them today. Either she’d done it to do whatever it is she’d wanted me to do by joining, or it was so she could watch Caroline’s reaction to what was happening, or some other reason I hadn’t thought of yet, but regardless of her intent, all of this was absolutely down to my twin in some way. Caroline’s attention was split between trying to get the girls to focus, yelling out routines, and looking back over at the crowd on the stands. What was her enhanced hearing picking up?

“I think we’re going to have to ditch the screen.” I looked at Tyler, and he explained, “The video you made would have worked for a small number, but there’s no way it’ll keep everyone’s attention. The only way to do that with a group this large is to treat this like a rally.”

But I'd spent like an hour editing that video last night, and it was only 5 minutes long. How short were their attention spans? “Why? I don’t want to get all those people pumped up to come back.“

“At this point, I’d worry more about saving face.”

“What are you talking about?” 

“If you flake out now, you’ll be doing it in front of what looks like most of the senior class.”

Well, if he knew even that much, he knew more about them than I did. So, most of the senior class plus April made it like half of half the school. “Flake out? When have I ever flaked out?”

“Look, I know you don’t do people.”

“Nope.”

“But you can use this instead of going over there and finding a way to kick most of them out.” 

“How’d you know – “

“It’s written all over your face. You can’t fight the world, Eve. You’ve gotta learn to live in it sometime.” Looking over at the bleachers again, he added, “And I might have an idea for how you can do that with it still being on your own terms.”

Not a bad start for a pitch. “I’m listening.”

Turning back to me excitedly, he said, “You feel the most at ease when you’re hunting, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And this is kind of like hunting. That’s why you want to do it, so you can keep up on your training while you’re finishing school. A lot of the moves are similar to ones you have to do when you’re hunting, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So instead of a video, why don’t we do a demonstration? Between the two of us, I’m sure we can pull something out of the bag that’ll impress all of them – even the ones who aren’t here for the actual club and are just here because everyone else is. You’ll be in your element, so it’ll help you relax, and they’ll actually have a chance to see what you can do . . . without the killing part. Show them how kick ass you really are, and I promise you that it’ll make going through those halls a lot easier tomorrow. You’ll get attention either way. You might hate it, but it’s true. You’re you, and you’re new, and you’re Elena’s twin. Trust me when I say that positive attention is definitely better than the kind of attention you’ve gotten around here so far, and since you’ll be in your element, it’ll actually work unlike with cheerleading.”

“I don’t know. They stopped keying my car after I did that.”

“I think we can do better than that, and those girls hated you almost as much as they hated Rebekah. The problem didn’t go away. It just got quieter. Why do you think Care always put you in the back?”

Because it's where I was most comfortable? But he made a good point about Rebekah. Looking over to the stands, I said, “Rebekah,” and then sing-songed, “Rebekah.”

“What are you doing?”

“Shh . . . Rebekah Mikaelson!” 

Barely louder than a speaking voice, and even over all those voices around her, her head still turned in my direction. Lifting my hand, I waved her over, and she cautiously looked around before saying something to April and getting up to come over to us. “What is it?”

“How would you feel about teaming up with us on this.”

“I don’t even know what this is. April just said there was something going on in the gym, but if this is because of you, I say abort now. They are like a pack of hyenas that will rip you apart.” 

“You’ve been saying that or something similar since the first day of school, but the last time I checked I’m still here and have all my limbs.” I flicked a look in Elena’s direction and then to Caroline. “But if they are out for blood, then I’m not sure that it’s my blood they’re after . . . or at least not entirely mine. Enough of Caroline’s nemeses together to knock her back, and the rest are there so someone can swoop in to help her sister at the last second maybe? Stupid, petty, high school bullshit that means absolutely nothing.” Exhaling a frustrated breath, I looked at Rebekah and added, “Even so . . . if it means I can screw up her plans by getting myself out whatever mess she’s manufactured, then I like the idea Tyler had, so I called you over, because as someone else with an image problem around here, I think you should be involved too.”

“What exactly are you doing here?”

“Starting a parkour and freerunning club.”

“What are those?”

“Think gymnastics and martial arts and using those to artfully get from point A to B through a set of obstacles. So, if you wanted to say get over a short wall, you vault over it, or if you want to go over a big wall, you run at something next to it, so you can push yourself off it and propel yourself up. Things like that.”

“Something tells me this isn’t something I can do in front of everyone here.”

Dragging his attention away from the crowd, Tyler said, “Actually, we can. I am . . . but I think Eve should go first. She’s gotta be the best human here at this, so she needs to be the one to set the bar for what we can do, and it’ll be high enough to keep you and me from getting bored. We just can’t do a whole lot more than she can, or we’ll look suspect.”

“What makes you think this is even something I might enjoy?”

I answered that one. “For starters, your brother climbed a cliff with me, like a human, and he seemed to enjoy the challenge of it.” 

Oops. Probably shouldn't have mentioned him in front of Tyler. I glanced at him, and he seemed okay if a bit preoccupied with what the crowd of teenagers might be saying about his girlfriend, as Rebekah said, "I’m sorry, but you expect me to believe that Nik – “

“How do you think we got to the cave before you?” 

Her face fell, and she quickly said, “Now that you mention it . . . You and I haven’t exactly had a chance to talk – “

“I am not the one who crammed the cure down Katherine’s throat.”

“No, my brother was. Why in the bloody hell did you bring him?!”

“He made very convincing arguments.”

“Of course he did, that’s what he does!”

“Okay, but I didn’t have a passport, and I was able to bring weapons on the plane because of him. He was my back up in case I was arrested, and he knew about international banking. He also remembered that we needed gas for the boat, so I wasn’t stranded in the middle of the ocean, and he got me an umbrella when I forgot to bring one and – “

“Are you telling me that I lost my once chance at being human, because you needed Nik to be your nanny?!”

“I’d say it’s more that he needed me to know where we were going, and I needed him to get there, but if that’s the way you want to look at it.” 

Relaxing somewhat, she tossed, “I expect more from you.”

“Yeah. You're not the only one . . . but think about everything I said, and ask yourself if you’d taken the cure on that island if you would have had a passport to get back or known how to return a rental car or boat or even how to pilot the boat back, or if you would’ve had to rely on the others or your brother to get you back here.”

She knew I was right, because she looked away from me when she stubbornly replied, “Katherine seems to have made it back just fine.”

“Because she’s learned how to get around in the world alone and under the radar for 500 years. You, on the other hand, have spent a fair amount of time daggered in a box or had your brothers looking out for you . . . and I guarantee, that even if she got away okay, she’s with a vampire right now, so she can take advantage of the abilities they possess, abilities that you have and that would make you a legend around here. You have a chance to be a part of something outside your family too. There’s a reason you’re here at school instead of hanging out alone at home, and I won’t allow the negativity you’ve experienced in school or on the squad anywhere near this club. If you see someone do something well, say good job. If you see someone struggling, help them get it right. It’s as easy as that . . . Also, Matt’s doing this, so . . . “

Incapable of not turning her head to look at him, she came back to me with, “If I were to participate, what would we be doing?”


	83. Lessons in Life

“You’re doing it again.” I glanced at Tyler, and he said, “If you kick everyone out, there will be no club.”

No club, and I wouldn’t be as likely to keep him from starting to obsess over Klaus again. I wouldn’t be able to use this as training, which I always found fun, and I wouldn’t be able to use this for my college applications. “I’m just going to get rid of your girlfriend’s haters.” 

“There might be some. I mean, not even I was her biggest fan when she was human, but since she turned, she’s been a lot better. I think a lot of them are here because they were told that if they wanted to know more about the Bizarro Gilbert, they should come here after school.”

“Do none of them seriously have anything better to do than go to an after school meet and greet with me?”

“Hey, I told you there wasn't much to do around here.”

"I contest the notion that there isn't much do around here. I have been consistently run off my feet since I got here." 

Sounding exasperated, he answered, "For a normal teenager there isn't much to do . . . And you haven’t exactly been open to anyone who isn’t a vampire since you started school, have you? They're curious."

Cutting in, Rebekah said, “If we take much longer, there isn’t going to be anyone left to impress. They’re getting restless.”

A side door opened, and a few more kids filed through it making Tyler mutter, “Looks like the stoner pit has arrived.”

He might be unimpressed with them, but I shrugged, “It actually makes sense that they’d be here. Some of them are into skateboarding, so I can see why they might have an interest in this.” Elena must’ve just told them what the club would be doing rather than whatever she’d said to the others to bring them here.

“Yeah, and it’s no mystery why they’re late either. Eve, you can’t let them join, or it’ll ruin what we’re trying to do here.”

“Don’t be so judge-y. If they’re genuinely interested, I’d take them over the ones who aren’t. Besides, I recognize a couple of them from Jeremy’s funeral, and they were the only ones who seemed to give a damn that he was dead. Anyone else over there who showed up and wasn’t Matt did it for the spectacle. I found the theatrics some of them exhibited with the over the top tears and histrionics insulting at best.”

At my bitter tone, Rebekah shared a look with Tyler, and said, “We can talk about it later, but right now we need to get over there . . . unless you’re stalling for some reason.”

I was. I knew I was. Tyler would be fine either way. He was just here to help out a friend, and I didn’t particularly care how successful this was as long as I got my 10 people to make this an official club. Rebekah, on the other hand, might actually need this for all the reasons Tyler had given me and I’d said to her, so since I was the one who had sold her on doing this, I owed it to her to not turn it into a train wreck that would drag her down with me. My eyes darted to her, and I replied, “Just talking myself into it . . . and condolences on Kol too by the way. I know that getting the cure might have taken some of the sting out of it, so not getting the cure probably makes it worse. It should’ve never happened,” before I ignored her reaction to that, inhaled deeply as I focused on my target, squared my shoulders in a way that would’ve made my Mom proud, and took my first step forward.

As we got closer, Tyler yelled to get everyone’s attention. “All right. Listen up!” 

The shushes and ‘quiets’ reverberated through the group until they’d all eventually shut up, and Tyler looked at me, like ‘the floor is yours.’ I felt like hiding behind him if I was honest, but as strange as it may seem, I felt that what I had to do more was live up to whatever subconscious expectations he had for me. Maybe Klaus had made the whole alpha thing up, and I was an idiot for even entertaining it. Maybe he hadn’t, but if he hadn’t, then how long would it remain true if I were to hide behind Tyler right now? Not long, and that wouldn’t serve either of us very well. Tyler needed someone to keep him on the straight and narrow after what happened to his Mom, and Klaus was right about me needing to work on learning how to gain influence. 

Rebekah needed me to get this right too, but I just couldn’t do what either of them thought would be easier and leave Caroline’s haters in the mix. We might be able to win them over to our cause, but it wouldn’t do anything to help an issue in the making for Caroline. “For those of you who don’t know, I’m Eve. He’s Tyler, and this is Rebekah. This is the call out for the Parkour and Freerunning club we’re trying to get started. It is not a drama club, so if you’re here because you were led to believe it can be used as a tool to alienate certain individuals in this school who may have cut you from their teams or clubs, then you can see yourself out now, because you aren’t going to get what you want here.”

Tyler looked at me in annoyance, but then took note as a number of the girls started looking at one another in pairs or small groups. Quickly turning back to me, he whispered, “Okay, it’s worse that I thought. Eve, you have to fix this. She definitely heard what you just said, and if she sees them all get up to leave, then - ”

I saw a couple of them start to stand and interrupted him to address the group, “But if what you actually need is a challenge to prove to yourself what you’re capable of doing or to find a new way of expressing yourself, then by all means stay.” That seemed to put a halt to it. The ones who had already gotten to their feet were kind of stuck though, like they weren’t sure what to do. There were a few laughs at their expense, and I said, “No judgement if you want to sit back down. Just making it clear I don’t want that kind of negativity here. I’m aware there must’ve been a fair amount of false advertising that I didn’t know about to get this number of people to stay after school. Not everyone is here, because they heard that there was something going on in the gym and didn’t want to be left out.” 

The girls sat, and quite a few other people started chattering amongst themselves, I presume to compare notes on what they’d been told to get them here. Turning to me Tyler muttered, “Nice save,” but I wasn’t entirely sure that it was. If I was keeping score, I think I may have to give a point to Elena, because now there was a clearer picture of the number of people who had an issue with Caroline. I wasn’t exactly surprised that she had detractors. She could be dictatorial, demeaning, and as tactless as I was at times, but I wouldn’t have thought there would be that many. I really just wanted this whole thing to be over. I looked over my shoulder to cue Rebekah, and she nodded before stepping forward to say, “Now that we’ve established what this club isn’t, let’s talk about what it is. How many of you know what parkour is?”

There was a hesitation on the part of the students. Nobody wanted to confirm it either way. To say you knew what something was when nobody else did was apparently as bad as admitting you didn’t know when everyone else did, so they all just sat and looked uncomfortable. “Nobody?” Rebekah looked back at me, and I tilted my head in the direction of the stoner pit kids. Remembering what I’d said about them, she turned to them saying, “Do any of you skateboard?” A few of them slouched, looked at the others, and then one of them who had been at Jeremy’s funeral lifted his hand in a nonchalant half-wave. A few of the others did the same, and Rebekah said, “Then surely you must have an idea.”

The first one to raise his hand said, “Some of the tricks are similar . . . but without a board.” 

His friends laughed, and Rebekah looked back at me to see if that was right. I nodded, and she perked up. “That’s right.”

One of Tyler’s friends shouted out, “Hey man, Tyler showed us some videos, and that didn’t look anything like skateboarding to me.”

The kid from the stoner pit yelled back, “Yeah? And what would you know about it? It takes more skill than anything you’ve ever had to do on a football field.”

Tyler stepped forward with an authoritative, “Hey! Let it go,” directed at his friend to keep him from responding, and I looked at his friend to say, “They’re in the same ballpark, and it does require the same kind of agility that skateboarding does.” 

Looking up at the stoner pit guy, I added, “And it requires strength and the kind of work ethic that being in an organized sport can teach you to have if you want to get good at it. I have no doubt that both of you can do it.” Looking at the others in the group, I asked, “How many of you have ever done gymnastics or tumbling of any kind?” No hands were raised. I arched a challenging eyebrow at the girls who’d gotten to their feet to leave earlier, because I knew they must’ve been cut from cheerleading. With a sigh, they raised their hands, and the others who might have been cut but hadn’t gotten up to leave all followed suit. “Then it’s something you can do.” Looking at everyone else, I asked, “How many of you have ever climbed up on a bench and jumped from one to another or hopped over a creek, jumped a log in the forest . . . anything that seems mundane like that?” More hands went up, and I said, “Then it’s something you can do – how well is really up to you.”

Speaking up again, Rebekah asked, “How many of you still have no idea what we’re really talking about and want us to demonstrate?”

At that, every hand lifted in the air, and I’d say it was a mixture of those who had no idea what we meant and those who did but wanted to see what we could do. Looking back at me, she said, “I hope you’re ready.” 

For her to one up me? That’s what her smirk said, but I was more than fine with that. I had no delusions that I’d ever be able to compete with an Original or really any vampire when it came to the kind of physicality we were discussing . . . unless I was hunting them, and then I’d kill them and not compete with them. Although, I suppose killing them could be seen as a competition of sorts too . . . and I was definitely stalling again. I looked behind us to see what I had to work with in here. Leaning into me, Tyler asked, “Do you have any idea what you’re going to do?”

“Other than go big? Not really. I’m really more of an improv kind of hunter once an overall plan is in place.” 

The climbing rope was still up for the gym classes, so I got some inspiration from that. The other bleachers on the other side of the gym were all closed up. There was a storage area at the top. It was a rectangular looking room. There was no wall at the front, so it was open for everyone to see on this side of the gym. Other than that, it had a back wall, and two walls along the sides, but they didn't make it all the way to the front, so there was railing that wrapped around from the front to the sides until it met where the side walls ended. The railing looked to be made of square metal rather than round pipes, and there were was a higher rail and a lower rail. Walking over to the side of the gym where one of the basketball goals was, I eyed up the distance I needed to go to get to the top of the bleachers. I should just about make it if I ran straight at it and up, but I’d have more space to work up there if I went at it from the side of the bleachers.

The key would be not to stop or pause to think about what I wanted to do to get around or over an obstacle. It all had to flow together from one fluid motion to the next. Should be fine. I'd just stick to what I knew until we could get an instructor in here to show us something new. Taking off at a jog, I ran at an angle towards the side of the bleachers and picked up my pace the closer I got. Then it was a hop off the lower part of the bleachers, a skip off the wall between the door and the side of the bleachers, and as my foot connected back up at a higher level of the bleachers, a jump up to catch the ledge. Pulling myself up, I made it to the top and planted my hands on the top railing, the way I might if I was going to bring my legs up between my arms to jump over it, but instead of going over, I landed squarely on top.

There was bulky junk being stored up here on this side of the storage space, so I immediately leapt to the top rail at the front that was parallel to the bleachers where the students were seated to get around it, and treating it like a beam ran a good 5 or 6 steps before leaping towards the storage space floor when I'd cleared the stored items. I went into a roll, the way I did when I jumped out of a tree with vampires, but at the lower height, it was less of a landing and more of something I used to propel me back onto my feet, so I could go straight into a front handspring. Coming out of it, I found myself only a couple steps away from what looked to be an old, abandoned, weight lifting bench.

Planting my hands on the cushiony bench, I brought both my legs through my arms the way I had to get onto the railing, but vaulted over the bench this time instead. The next hurdle was who knew what, because it was covered with a tarp, and since I didn't want to be jumping onto or over something when I didn't know what it was, I ran at the railing at the front again to kick off the second railing, so I could go around the unknown pile of clutter. Then it was only a few more steps to the railing on the far side of the storage space. Reaching it, I planted my hand on top, and swung my legs over. The moment my feet touched down on the inch or two on the other side of the railing, I leapt for the climbing rope. Catching it, I swung forward, kicked off the opposite wall, and flew back towards the bleachers. Letting go, I caught the edge of the top of the closed bleachers with my hands, and my knees were up at a 90 degree angle, because I’d fully intended to do a backflip as my dismount, but a rather infuriated, “Miss Gilbert! Get down off of there!” came from my right. 

I looked, and there was Principal Webber. “Uh . . . does it matter how I do it, or – “

“Get. Down!”

Probably shouldn’t do the backflip. It might be a step to far considering he already seemed pretty angry. Looking down at the ground, I let go, and the landing was solid, but a little boring, and he pointed at me saying, “My office. Now.”

Okay. Whatever. But then he disbanded the kids on the bleachers, and started telling Tyler and Rebekah he wanted to see them too, so I darted in front of him to put his focus back on me. Lifting my hands to let him know I was unarmed, because he’d seemed a little jumpy with the way I’d gotten in front of him, I quickly said, “Whatever you’re upset about, your problem is with me. They were just here for crowd control. They had no idea what I was going to do.” 

Totally true. Not a lie, and he seemed to buy it, because looking over my shoulder in their direction, he gave a rather direct, “Then get home. Both of you.”

Seeing movement out of the corner of my eye, I left him, and turned to my right to aggressively block the vampire cheerleader charging in his direction. Standing almost nose to nose with Elena, I stated a commanding, “No.” Her eyes narrowed, and I added a muted, “Whatever you were hoping to achieve here today . . . swooping in to save me in some way . . . let’s skip to the part where you use it to get something from me in return and just say, I’ll take you out of town for a little fun this weekend if you leave this to me.”

Relaxing, she shrugged. “I can work with that. I’ll see you at home.” 

With that, she turned on her heel to head back across the gym, and I looked back at the Principal over my shoulder with a sheepish smile. “Siblings. Am I right?”

“Is this a joke to you?”

Kinda. Yeah. I hadn’t really done anything wrong, or I didn’t think I had. “I don’t get the impression that you want me to answer that truthfully.” His face went stony, and I asked a confused, “What?”

Heading in the direction of one of the gym doors, he asked an annoyed, “Who is your point of contact, Miss Gilbert?” 

Uh, well, it made a whole lot more sense for it to be Damon when the town wasn’t on vervain, because he could just compel the trouble away, and if I had to go to the hospital or something, it made sense too, but outside of those very specific parameters, I felt a bit weird about having him come here as something of a guardian figure when I was in trouble. “Do I need one? I am 18.”

“The choice is yours, Miss. Gilbert, but I think it would be advisable.”

Okay. “Liz Forbes, I guess.” He looked back at me, like he didn’t remember that she’s the one who was the driving force to sign me up here and was going to ask if I thought this was a joke again, but decided to go with it for now, and I went with him to his office. I waited out in the reception area while he called her, but insisted on going in with her when she got there. I wasn’t about to have other people make decisions about my life when I wasn’t present. It’s sort of how I’d gotten stuck going to this school in the first place.

He seemed to think I thought I was above the rules. I honestly agreed with him to an extent. I did have a tendency to disregard the rules that human society had created, not that I said that. I mostly sat back and observed. I’d never gotten into official trouble with somebody not in the know, so it was a brand new experience for me, and I wasn’t entirely sure why I was in trouble. He’d gotten word that there was a large gathering in the gym and had gone to investigate, caught me doing me my routine, and seemed to think what I’d done was dangerous, but I’d put it at like a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. Honestly, the most dangerous thing I’d done was get in Elena’s way, and that was still like a 2 or 3, because I’d handled it without having to resort to violence . . . Maybe calling Liz had even been slightly more dangerous than that, because she was currently tanking. “I know what she did might have seemed dangerous – “

“Seemed?! Sherriff, it was a lawsuit in the making, and if any of the other students around here get the idea . . . Well, I can’t allow that to happen. I’d be hard pushed not to suspend any student caught doing what she did, but when you take into account the disruption that her being here has had on the classrooms she’s attending – “

Looking at me slouching next to her, Liz cut him off. “With all due respect, Principal Webber, I find it hard to believe that Eve has been disruptive in class. She wouldn’t like the attention.”

“Yet I found her engaging in extreme attention seeking behaviour.” Sitting forward, he added, “It’s enough to make one wonder about the allegations of illness if she is able to do what I saw. Making teachers cater to her requests, rearranging seating assignments, keeping the blinds closed, wearing sunglasses and gloves in the middle of the day . . . ”

“I can assure you, that her illness is genuine. Call Meredith Fell. She can confirm, and Eve has been under stress lately with the loss of her cousin. If you remember, it hasn’t even been a year since her parents - ”

“Yes, well, we’ve exceeded any allowances I may have had for that. I’m afraid I have no choice but to consider expulsion as – “

“Expulsion?! From what I understand, she’s been a model student. You can’t expel her for – “

“Sherriff, I am well within my rights to – “

The door behind us opened, and I looked over my shoulder as a blonde tornado blew in through the door, but it wasn’t the one I would have expected. Slamming the door shut behind her, Rebekah steadied herself by fixing a few stray hairs that’d been disturbed by the wind from the door, threw her shoulders back into a formidable posture, and stepped forward as Principal Webber said, “Miss Mikaelson, this is unacceptable.”

“I find this entire charade unacceptable, Principal Webber.” Looking at Liz as she sat on the other side of me, she said, “Thank you, Sherriff, for sitting in with her until I could speak with my brother. He should be here shortly.” Looking at the Principal, she added, “He just had to make a quick call to his solicitor.” Giving him a smug, closed mouth smile, she settled back in her seat as he tossed his pin on the desk and sighed. 

I quietly hissed, “What are you doing?” and Rebekah finally looked at me.

Staring pointedly at the Principal, she answered, “Not allowing this man to ruin your future. Honestly, he should be ashamed of himself.”

“Okay . . . Why?” I hadn’t asked her to get involved.

Casting me a brief look, she answered, “We’re a team now. That means we stick together.” 

Because of the club? Call me suspicious, but if she’d fully gotten on board with the club, and I got kicked out, then the club would probably be taken from her, so that might explain her getting involved - unless it was something else. “What does Klaus have to do with anything?”

Leaning closer to whisper in my ear, she said, “If you’re going to be a hunter, then I highly doubt this will be the last time you face a situation like this. Since you don’t have the same so-called benefits we do, you need to start learning how to do this yourself, and I am not your nanny.”

Or maybe she didn’t know how to talk her way out of trouble either without being able to compel the Principal . . . of course she could kill him, which gave credence to her thinking that talking my way out of things like this was something I should learn to do, but why did she care if I learned that or not? I knew that deep down she was looking for friends, so I really hoped that wasn’t what was driving all of this. It’d feel way too much like she was trying to buy friendship from me. She could do better than that, and I didn’t like the idea of using someone else’s desperation that way. “Is that how you sold it to him?”

“You're about to find out.“ Her eyes flicked past me to Liz. “You can go. We’ll take it from here.”

Liz looked at me, and I didn’t really know what was happening right now, but to be honest, I hadn’t really known since we’d gotten in here. I didn’t think that Klaus or Rebekah were going to paint this guy’s blood all over his office walls though, and even if they did, there’s very little she could do to stop them, so I simply shrugged before saying, “Thanks. I’ll talk to you outside.” Her expression said she was more than a little doubtful that she should leave us all alone together, and I smiled before saying, “It’ll be fine. You have my word.”

She relaxed somewhat before tossing an annoyed look at Principal Webber as she got up and said, “A lawyer might not be the worst idea anyway.” Looking down at me, she added, “And we will be having that discussion when you’re done here.” I nodded, and she headed for the door. Opening it, she murmured, “Klaus . . . Play nice,” before walking past him, so I guess Rebekah must’ve heard him coming. As he came through the door, I turned back around, not really knowing what to expect. Maybe the reason Rebekah had gotten him involved was because everyone in this school saw her as a teenager and wouldn’t take anything she had to say seriously unless she vamped out on them. Because there was a noticeable difference in the way Klaus was greeted compared to her. There was no, ‘This is unacceptable,’ this time. No, instead, the Principal got to his feet to shake Klaus’s hand, with an almost fawning, ‘Mr. Mikaelson, glad you could make it,’ and Rebekah and I shared a look. 

I don’t think she liked not being taken seriously any more than I did, probably less, considering her age. Taking a seat next to me, like he was having a grand old time, Klaus said, “So, I understand our Eve has gotten herself into a spot of trouble.” He thought this whole thing was hilarious, didn’t he?

“Well, Mr. Mikaelson, I caught her blah, blah, blah, highly dangerous.” At that, Klaus had to cover the corners of his mouth curling up with his hand as he leaned his elbow on the arm and faked looking interested. Then it was more, “Blah, blah, blah, poor role model for the other students, blah, blah, blah, attention seeking. In need of counselling, blah, blah, blah, above the rules. Blah, blah, blah forcing this school to accommodate an illness blah, blah, blah . . . “ 

Basically, everything he’d said to Liz, but in a much less confrontational way. Wouldn’t want the guy with the biggest mansion in town to get his lawyer involved, now would we? Not sure that the Principal’s tone really mattered though. It was Klaus after all, and with each word that tumbled out of Principal’s Webber’s mouth, Klaus’s humour fell a little more. Even with Klaus here, the Principal was still attempting to flex what little power he had in the world by threatening to take away my academic future. Of course Klaus was going to have an issue with anyone posturing with him, no matter how politely it was done, but it was more than that. 

Klaus was more than willing to let people he cared about handle their own issues when he knew they could, like when Rebekah got taken by members of the previous council, but if people he cared about were threatened in a way they couldn’t defend against, then he took it personally, like it was an attak on him . . . unless he was the one doing the threatening, then he was fine with it and often thought he was the victim in some way, but that was an issue for another day . . . At any rate, I think at this point, it was fair to say he cared about me in some fashion, and it made me something of an addendum to his idea of who to protect in a 'if you ever go after my family or I again, you and everyone you know is dead . . . oh, and the same goes for Eve too' kind of way, and this kind of real world problem was definitely an area where I was lacking in the ability to defend myself.

There was a moment when his eyes narrowed ever so infinitesimally, and I suspected that he was contemplating ripping the Principal’s tongue right out of his head, so interrupting the Principal, I leaned into Klaus’s shoulder and said, “You know Rebekah or even I could have done what you’re thinking.” 

“This is precisely what I’m talking about. She has absolutely no respect – “ 

Klaus’s attention flew back to the Principal, and I sat up straighter saying, “No, he’s right. I don’t respect him at all. Aside from him being a living breathing person, I see him as a complete non-entity. If that's the problem, how do I fix it?”

“Mr. Mikealeson – “

Lifting his hand to silence Principal Weber, Klaus turned and looked at me. “The only thing in need of fixing here is that you have yet to let him know why it is that he should respect you.” 

I gave him a dubious look. “I hardly think I can go around doing what I would normally do to achieve something like that.”

“And yet you understand the more subtle forms that power plays can take. Those remain true the world over. Now, what is it that you were trying to do when he caught you in this most egregious act?” I hesitated before leaning down to grab a folder out of my bag and handed it to him. Everything for the club was in it. Flicking it open, Klaus scanned it, and the more he scanned, the more his eyebrows arched. “It’s very . . . detailed, isn’t it?” 

Well, it’s not like I disagreed with Caroline’s approach to planning these kinds of activities. “Mmhmm.” 

Damon would buy the equipment for training in the gym. It was his way of making up for the bouncy castle fiasco. I’d pay for the instructor I’d contacted from Richmond, so I could pass along the good deed of Klaus funding my Jo staff instructor. Liz had done a background check on him for me, and that was in there along with his rate for coming to Mystic Falls three times a week – Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. There was a sheet with all the costings for the equipment from extra mats to vault boxes and a portable pipe climbing structure along with a diagram for where the equipment could go in the gym to make it an effective obstacle course for training purposes. All of it could be easily stored during school hours except the climbing structure, which was going to be really heavy, but since it was portable, and there was a hybrid and now an Original vampire in the club, that might be easy enough to move upstairs to the open storage space above the gym after everyone else had gone home and to get it back down before everyone else arrived for the start of the next meeting. 

Even though the equipment and the trainer were going to be covered by Damon and I as anonymous donors, I still wanted to have the club do fundraisers so we could use the money we raised to fund a charitable organization in town. I was thinking about Meals on Wheels, because the town didn’t have one. Sure, the Council could fund one, but if it meant they had to take away from one of the numerous and unnecessary town beautification projects around here to do it, then I felt more confident that they would if the teenagers around here already had the project up and running. One, it'd shame them into it. Two, the costs for starting something like this up were a lot more than the costs of maintaining it would be, and if they saw that it was successful, they could keep an already working apparatus going after school was out. Pointing at the costings for the Meals on Wheels proposal, Klaus leaned into my shoulder and said, “This is to mitigate reactions like the current one?” 

Yeah, it was yet another thing I couldn’t claim was entirely altruistic, because in addition to it helping the community, it was for PR. If we were the kids who helped feed the elderly and shut-ins, people would be less likely to see us as delinquents jumping on their monuments. “Yeah.”

Glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, he offered the flicker of a smile that said he approved. His smile grew as he got to the section a bit further down where I’d put that any surplus from the fundraising could go into funds for small scholarships to pay for a semester or two of books for at least two of the club members. “I like the confidence here of thinking you’ll have that much left over after a few car washes.” 

"Don't forget the bake sale." He looked like he was trying not to laugh, and I quickly added a defensive, "Anything is possible.”

“You’re not topping it up yourself to hit the target.” He seemed sure of that, so I wondered if that meant he would. Closing the folder, he asked, “Has he seen this?”

“I showed it to him when I was getting the forms that the kids will need to have their parents sign . . . and permission to use the screen for the video I didn't end up using.”

“And I take it he doesn’t know what parkour is?”

With a slow nod, I answered, “That would be my guess.”

“More training?”

Yeah, that’s why I wanted to do it, but it also looked fun, and he didn’t need to know that it was to give Tyler something else to take his mind off of getting revenge on him. “And maybe trying to find a fun way to live in the world on my own terms?”

“Unfortunately, I think your terms are more in line with our terms. It’s a discussion we can have later. Did anyone record it?” He looked at Rebekah for the answer to that one, and it seemed to be a maybe. “Take care of it.” She nodded, and he turned back to the Principal. “You understand that she could have the finest tutors that money could offer?”

“I think that might be a good – “

“And yet she’s here because she needs to learn how to socialize, so she will be attending class tomorrow and with all the accommodations she requires, because her illness is not a grab for attention, but a genuine condition, and she will be starting this club with the school’s full backing on Monday next. In return, the school will receive a generous donation. Or I could make a phone call, and the Secretary of Education will shut this place down.” So, a carrot and a stick approach minus having the threat of death being the stick? But it was still a pretty huge frickin’ stick that I’d never be able to obtain. Looking at me, he asked, “Acceptable?”

From the moment he'd cut Principal Webber off to focus on me, he'd shifted the power in this dynamic to me and away from the man sitting across from us, but with that one word, he'd given me power over the situation entirely, because Klaus's terms weren't negotiable with Principal Webber, and they were only acceptable if I agreed. "As long as the donation isn’t for a new scoreboard or something. The music department here is severely lacking.”

“Consider it done.” Starting to stand, he asked, “Shall we?” 

Rebekah and I followed suit, and Principal Webber slammed his hand down on the desk as he jumped to his feet. “Now, wait one second! This is completely – “ 

The phone on the desk rang, and Klaus looked back at him with a smirk. “That’d be the Secretary expecting an update.” Okay, even if that wasn't really the Secretary of Education, Klaus had clearly orchestrated this call before ever setting foot inside the office, and I had to appreciate how perfect he must've gotten the timings to ensure that the call had the greatest impact. In the dramatic emphasis category, it was a definite A+ from me. There was a brief standoff as Principal Webber refused to fall for something he clearly saw as a ruse versus Klaus’s unflinching confidence. As the rings piled up, the Principal started to waiver and eventually gave in all together. “This is Principal – “ His eyes darted to Klaus again, and he slowly sank into his seat stammering, “Yes, I’ll hold . . . “ 

Turning away from him without another look back, Klaus headed for the door, and I have to say the entire thing was far more bad-ass than if he’d gone in there and ripped the guy’s tongue out. The second the door closed behind the three of us, I asked, “Do you know the Secretary of Education?”

“Not personally, but using backdoor channels to donate to the right causes or campaigns can provide you both with anonymity and the ability to pull the strings of power.” I wasn’t sure how much I should like that idea considering the source, but the entire lesson was still the most useful thing I’d learned in this school.


	84. Girls' Night Out

Giving myself a final glance in the mirror in my bathroom, I thought I looked okay. Over-sized black dress shirt with a black belt to turn it into a dress that came to mid-thigh, black combat boots on my feet. My hair had a kind of choppy look to it, and I’d gone pretty light with my make up. There was someone in my bedroom though, who would not approve of anything except my hair and maybe the belt, so I needed to plan my path to the new black faux-fur trimmed parka that was hanging up on the back of my door without her noticing. 1, 2, 3 . . . I opened the door and made a beeline for my chosen jacket, but was promptly stopped as Caroline vampire-sprinted in front of me. Giving me a once over before shaking her head, there was only a slight twinge of whine to her voice as she said, “It’s not the worst, but would it kill you to wear something pretty for once?”

There's no way I was wearing anything sleeveless the way she was. “No, but it might damn someone else to hell, so . . . “ 

“Oh, don’t blame this on your curse. I thought you made it so that would only happen if you touched a human while you were killing them. If you were really worried about skin on skin contact, you’d have your black leggings on too.”

One, she had a point about me potentially changing the way the curse claimed souls, and while I hoped that was true, it wasn’t necessarily something I wanted to test. Two, the leggings didn't work with the outfit. Three, we were going to a club, not a brothel. Nobody should be touching me from mid-calf to mid-thigh, and if they were so inclined, I was going to wear my gloves to stop them before that happened. I was more worried about it being over-crowded and another person wearing a dress bumping into me, but if I stayed alert, kept to the walls, and had the 3 vampires going on this girls' night out as a buffer when we were dancing, then it should be fine. “I was thinking about wearing them, but the look wasn’t quite right, and – “

There was a knock at my door, and I opened it. Holding up two dresses, one that definitely used to be Alice’s, and one that was probably hers, Rebekah asked, “Which one do you think I should wear?” The one I suspected was hers was black, had sequins, was form fitting, super short, and had a high neck halter top. The other was knee high, dark blue, flowy from the waist down, and had long bishop sleeves. With a sad smile, I pointed the blue dress at the same time that Caroline pointed to the black one, and Rebekah’s eyebrow quirked up. “I have 2 votes to 1 for the black dress. Why do you like the blue?” 

“Okay, let me start by saying that I’m not sure I’d take the opinion of someone without their humanity seriously.” Looking at the dresses again, I added, “You should always wear what feels right. The black dress is definitely a dress for someone on the prowl. Your make up is going to have to be quite dark to match the attitude of the dress. The overall look will be harsh, indifferent – a mask that you can hide behind - and that’s fine if that’s how you’re feeling, but it lacks any real personality . . . exactly the kind of thing someone without their humanity would wear. With the blue . . . It’s softer, shows a more care-free side, would make you seem more approachable, and it’s definitely your colour. It’ll make your eyes stand out more too. Basically, it would highlight you in a way the other one wouldn’t.” 

She’d obviously brought the black dress with her to change into here, and if I’d insulted her with my opinion on that dress, she didn’t give off that impression. There was something about the blue one that had drawn her to it, so I think that’s the one she really wanted to wear, because for a brief moment, she looked quite self-conscious before giving me a slight nod that landed somewhere between being a thanks and saying she agreed. She’d adapted quite well to living in the modern world, and fashion was important to her, because it was an easy way to fit in or to make a statement, but it had to be something of a struggle for her to get it as right as she did as often as she did. She turned to head back to Elena’s room to change and paused to glance at what I was wearing. “Is that Damon’s?”

Why yes, yes it was Damon’s shirt. It went with one of his suits, and I was looking forward to seeing his reaction to me wearing it out of this house tonight. I smiled in confirmation, and her eyebrows rose, like she found that intriguing. “There’s something quite sexy about that.” Tossing a look at Caroline, she added, “It gets my vote over pretty anyway,” before making her exit. 

I closed the door, and Caroline hissed, “Why did you tell her to wear that one?! It isn’t hers.” Her recognition that it had been Alice’s dress appeared to answer whether or not she’d been with Alice when Alice got it. I guess I could understand her not wanting Rebekah to wear it if shopping with Alice to get the dress was an important memory to her. It might seem like an insult to that memory she had of Alice or be a painful reminder of Alice, which is why I would have told Rebekah not to wear the red dress that Alice had worn to the convention or any of the day-to-day clothes I closely associated with her, but I got the feeling that this was more of a territorial issue with Caroline than anything else.

Grabbing my parka from its hook on the back of the door, I answered, “Alice never had a chance to wear it, and it isn’t like she needs it anymore. What’s the harm?”

Looking over her shoulder in the direction of the door, Caroline shook her head. “What’s she even doing here?”

Yeah, see, that’s what I thought – territorial. “Seriously?” She looked at me as I slipped on the parka, and I asked, “Have we learned nothing at all about excluding people this last week?” Not that I was keen on receiving either kind of attention, but Tyler was right, whether it was in your face and obvious or more like quiet whispers from the corners, there was a definite difference when the attention you received was positive rather than negative, so I knew she couldn’t have had an easy time the last few days.

I waited for her answer, and her shoulders fell, which was answer enough for me. I turned to go to my cabinet, and she defended herself saying, “It isn’t my fault those girls weren’t good enough to make the squad.”

Opening the cabinet door and reaching for my thigh sheath, I responded, “Not good enough to meet the challenge or didn’t have the right look to match the one you wanted the squad to have?”

The was a soft gasp over my shoulder, so I looked back, and she quickly rushed out, “Are you asking if my decision to cut them was purely shallow?” My eyebrow arched, and I got to work buckling the sheath around my thigh, which prompted her to prattle, “You’ll see. Most of them won’t even be able to do just that front handspring you did, and it’ll hold everyone else back.”

“The only people holding anyone back will be the ones who don’t put the work in on it to get better, and they’ll only be holding themselves back. That’s kind of the whole idea. It’s you versus yourself.”

“Well, cheerleading isn’t an individual sport.”

Could I have left it at that? Sure. Did I? Nope. I knew that while I was making a point about the people she’d made feel ‘less than’ over the years, she’d focus entirely on the cheerleading aspect of it, because cheerleading was so important to her, and yet I still said, “Don’t teams generally try to help weaker links get better to fill the gaps?”

“A bare minimum of talent is still required to make the team.”

“If people who don’t have natural talent work hard to get better, they often do get to play on game day though.” 

“And what are your game days going to look like? Are there even competitions for this?”

“They’re relatively new. I think the first one was in 2007, but you can’t exactly tell me that the cheerleading squad at our school is a competitive cheer squad, which is a different thing entirely.”

“I’ll have you know we have a competition at the end of March.”

“But your primary focus is cheering on the football or basketball teams on a Friday night. You are side-line entertainment for a crowd who is there to see somebody else.”

Low blow? Yeah, it was, but Caroline was quick to call me on it. “It was good enough for you to join when you needed your image rehabilitated.”

Reaching for my indestructible stake, I slid it into the sheath saying, “True, and to have an excuse to hang out with you from what I remember, but isn’t it also something that you’ve used over the years to put people in their place, as you see it, because they don’t meet your subjective standard for what it means to be worthy of being on the squad?” 

“At least I have standards.”

Instead of taking the bait and either asking what she meant by that or telling her that I, too, had standards, I simply asked, “Which are?”

With a huff, she threw her hands in the air and went to flop down on the edge of my bed. “Why are you being so mean to me?!”

“We haven’t suddenly circled back around to the question you’ve been dodging about what it was, exactly, that made you decide who was worthy and who wasn’t, have we? Because if you can answer that and admit you probably weren’t the nicest when you did it, then you’ll have an explanation for how you’ve been able to amass yourself a good-sized horde of silent enemies. Only then, can you finally start to fix it.”

“All right, fine! I can be competitive, hypercritical, and a perfectionist.”

“And?”

“And sometimes people take my constructive criticism the wrong way?”

“Constructive?“ Looking away, like I could see something in the far distance, I murmured, “And there goes the homecoming crown . . . going, going, gone.”

“Homecoming was last semester, and I didn’t win.”

Reaching back into my cupboard to grab some vervain darts, I muttered, “Well, I guess, now we know why.”

Still focusing on the wrong thing and thoroughly confused, Caroline continued, “You were there . . . It’s when you killed all those hybrids. Wait. Are you talking about prom?!” I shrugged, and she quickly got to her feet saying, “You got that wrong on purpose. Was it to prove it doesn’t mean anything to you or just to annoy me?”

“Probably both.”

“What has gotten into you lately? I’ve done nothing – “ I whirled back to look at her, and she quickly said, “Besides that.” I opened my mouth to remind her of the funeral, and she added, “And the other thing.” I gave her a look that said, ‘you have got to be kidding me,’ and she whined, “Or is it because I won’t leave you alone about Bonnie? I’m having a hard time keeping track of all the reasons you seem to have these days to be mad at me.”

“Me too!” Her face fell, and I added, “But I also know that despite all that, I really didn’t like what I saw on Tuesday, and I’m trying to help you out.”

“Like how you’re supposedly helping Tyler? All he ever talks about is this club and playing the drums now.”

“Better than ways of getting revenge on Klaus, no?”

Losing some of her bluster, she said, “Okay, you might have switched his obsession from that to something else, but I still feel like I’m losing him, and I can’t help but think that’s at least part of why you’re doing it.” Wow. My eyes briefly widened, and I turned away from her to start digging through my cupboard for a mini-handheld arrow launcher that looked more like a pocket taser than a crossbow. Easy to hide up your sleeve and wouldn’t draw too much attention if I had to use it to nail my twin’s foot to the floor. “Well?” 

Oh, did Caroline actually want me to acknowledge the accusation? “He puts you first, so I knew you’d have a problem with it if anyone started taking away some of the attention he gives you even if it’s just to give him some direction, but it’s what he needs until he learns to make it on his own. He has the same problem you do by the way . . . people in that school can’t stand him any more than they can stand you, but he’s slowly coming around to the idea that maybe some of the people he was a dick to in the past are more interesting than he used to think they were. He’s even started saying ‘hi’ to some of them when he’s waiting for me after band to go to lunch, and okay, so maybe it’s freaking some of them out, but the point is he’s willing to take what I’ve said to him on board, and I’m sure that by the end of the year, he’ll have made amends for the things he put them through in the past.”

“But who asked you to do any of that?”

“Other than Mason? I’ve been hands off so far, but I’m making up for it now . . . and Tyler actually seems kind of happy if you hadn’t noticed.”

“Are you saying he wasn’t happy with me before?”

“No. It’s a different kind of happiness. He’s learning to be happy in himself. Before his Mom died, he always had this lost expression on his face, because he had no idea where he fit in the world, and after she died, he started to think getting revenge was his purpose, but now he’s less angry and more assertive. He’s actually started on a journey he needs to take to find who he is, and you should be proud of him, because deep down, he is a protector and probably a great leader, so when his full potential is realized, he’ll have a lot to give the world.”

“I guess.” 

She sounded defeated, so I looked back at her. “What?”

“Do you like him better than me now?”

Judging by the incredibly vulnerable look on her face, the issue wasn’t that I’d given him some hobbies to fill his time, and it wasn’t that she thought I was trying to punish her by taking him away from her. It was that I was spending time with him instead of her, and she thought I was doing it to make her jealous of him for the time he got to spend with me, I guess? How weird. It might actually explain her asking what Rebekah was doing here too though. I still got along with Tyler and Rebekah for the most part, and lately, I couldn’t spend 5 minutes with Caroline without it devolving into an argument. Tyler had stayed near the top of my list of trust and Rebekah had made her way onto the bottom rung, but Caroline had fallen completely off of it with that stunt she’d pulled with Jeremy’s corpse theft, because I knew she was the mastermind behind it. If I was being honest with myself though, who I trusted didn’t necessarily line up with how much I cared about them. Briefly bowing my head, I answered, “It isn’t a competition.”

“Except you made a point of letting him out Elena’s house first. I don’t understand why – “

“He earned it.”

“But all I’ve ever tried to do is be your friend.“

“Yeah, and thanks for that, but now I can’t help but think it’s because you were ostracized a bit from the rest of the group for not telling them everything you knew about me and had nowhere else to turn until they let you back into the fold.”

I was really hoping I’d be able to get a ‘well?’ in there the way she had, but she almost immediately took half a step back and asked a shocked, “Why would you say that?!”

“Because I know how they are now. I knew you were in the middle, and I didn’t like it, but I didn’t think you were being shunned, and you must have been. It’s why you stepped forward at Dad’s funeral when I got there, because now that I think about it, you were already standing a little apart from everyone else, and it’s why you hung back with Tyler instead of going with them, and – “

“Eve, I did both of those things to let you know that I was there for you.”

Ignoring her, I continued, “And you were over here almost every day to train last summer. I thought when I took a step back the night Bonnie freaked out about me training you to be a better vampire, I was keeping you from being cast out, but I was too late by a few months. You were actually – “

“Would you stop!” I paused at her outburst, and she yelled, “I was here to train with you every day because I like spending time with you! Don’t re-write everything because you’ve suddenly decided I’m a bad friend.”

“I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a bad friend. I think you’re probably either a friend or not. I’d just say that you’re not the friend I thought you were, and I wouldn’t say it was all that sudden. I’ve had about a month now to churn it over in the back of my mind.”

At that, she choked out a teary, “What?” and slowly back-peddled the step or two she needed to make it to the foot of my bed before crumpling onto it and burying her face in her hands with a sob. 

What was I supposed to do now? Awkwardly looking around for something to do or somewhere to go, I thought it was probably best not to leave entirely. Going into my bathroom, I got some tissue paper and came back with it. Sitting next to her, I nudged her with my elbow and murmured, “Come on, you’re ruining your make up.”

She took the tissue and balled it up in her fist but kept right on crying into her other hand as she said, “I’d hoped we could get past it, but I keep screwing up. You hate me now, don’t you?”

Well, I certainly hated the crying. I needed to make that stop. “Not at all, but I don’t know what you want me to say or do, Care. You literally broke my heart, maybe, just a little.” I wasn’t sure if she exhaled another sob or a laugh, but I think it was somewhere in between, because when she finally looked at me, she was still crying but also smiling a little. “What? You did.” Looking down at my chest, I pointed to it and said, “I felt it. Right here. It was this icy, stinging, horrible, constricting feeling, and it happened right around the time I figured out you were lying to me.”

When I looked back up at her, I was 50/50 on whether that’d get another laugh or make her start crying harder. I was not prepared for her to fling her arms around me and say, “You called me, Care.”

“And?”

“And you don’t do nicknames.”

“That’s not true. I call Stefan, Doll Maker, and Elena, The Twin.”

“But you’ve never used my nickname. It’s like you don’t think you should, because you haven’t known me long enough.” Throwing my eyes to the ceiling, I breathed out a sigh, and sounding less euphoric, she added, “You know it was probably your curse, right? Your heart wasn’t literally broken.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured . . . It does take its cue from how I’m feeling though.”

“Betrayed?”

“Mhm.”

“I’m so, so sorry, Eve.”

“Okay.”

“And I’m sorry about the funeral. Bonnie was just really struggling, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

“The fact that you thought what you should do was steal a dead body should’ve told you how much help she really needs.”

“You’re probably right. It’s just so hard to see her like this. She’s a mess. Elena’s a mess. Everything is a mess, and I don’t know what to do about it . . . I should’ve told you what I was thinking though. You probably would’ve agreed to – “

“Probably not to be fair. I just would’ve given the lecture I gave before he went missing instead of after he disappeared. Then I wouldn’t have had to find him looking passed out in the back of Matt’s truck.”

Sitting back, she finally let me go and asked, “Was it bad?”

It wasn't a surprise that she didn't know the answer to that. If she and Bonnie had been involved in actively moving the body instead of acting as a distraction to keep anyone from seeing Tyler and Matt move him, then Damon and I wouldn't have found him in the state we did. I’d said what I had to say to Tyler and Bonnie about it and had mostly been avoiding Matt, so the grudge I felt over it was almost entirely directed at Caroline. Despite knowing why she'd done it and being able to understand it to a degree, it'd still been her idea, so I held her the most responsible for it. “His suit was dirty. His hair was wrong, and the makeup to make him look alive was smudged. On top of that, Damon then had to carry him back into the building, and the two of us had to stuff him back in his coffin.”

“Okay, I know I said I was sorry, but now I’m really sorry. That must’ve been horrible.”

Finally an out and out apology for it without any excuses, and maybe now, I could start to let it go. “Yeah.”

“And about Bonnie . . . “

“I’m going to check on her on the full moon, but if she’s doing fine, I’m leaving her there, and I don’t want to hear about it if I do. I wouldn't leave her behind if I think they're going to kill her. She'll be fine until the next celestial event, and then I'll check in on her again.”

She gave me a hesitant nod before cautiously saying, “Do you think maybe we could send her letters or something, so she doesn't feel like she's missing out on anything and to maybe give her a boost?"

I didn't see a problem with that. "Have your letter ready for me by the full moon, and I'll leave it for them to find . . . Just maybe don't put anything in there that you wouldn't want them to read. There's always a chance they might before they give it to her."

"Like prison?"

"More like rehab run by nosey witches."

I could already see her starting to plan what she was going to write. She gave me another nod and then hazarded, "With your club . . . do you think maybe you could move it to the evening, so I can do it too after cheerleading practice is over?”

“Not on Fridays, because that’s game night, and we have to be out early for home games.”

“Well, could you move it to Thursdays?”

“I thought we were going to have band practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

“Sundays and Tuesday might work . . . I just . . . Well, I think I’m the one who needs your help this time. Everyone hates me right now.”

Yeah, they kind of did, hence the reason I’d started this discussion in the first place. Finding out how much power she actually wielded in that school after what happened with me was a lesson that must've really stuck with Elena after that humanity switch of hers had been flipped to off, because she'd made full use of it with regards to Caroline and seemed to have toppled her in less than a week. “If you're serious about it, I’ll talk it over with the trainer to see if he's available on Thursdays, and there's nothing I can do about changing the time for the first meeting on Monday . . . But I'll tell you the same thing I told Rebekah. No negativity – either directed at you or from you – if you see someone doing something well, say good job. If they’re struggling, help them get it right. Can you do that and be nice?”

“I’ll try.”

“No trying. See, I have standards too, and that’s what it takes to join.”

“Okay, fine. I will grin and bear it . . . Can I be vice president?”

“We’re having open elections at the first meeting . . . but I don’t think you should run for anything. You might think you’re only as good as the results you produce after browbeating your minions into shape for events, committees, and clubs, but you’re actually more than that. You should give yourself a chance to be a part of something and just be.”

Looking disappointed, she asked, “What about the fundraising? I heard that’s going to be used to set up a Meals on Wheels. There’s no way you’re going to have time to do all that by yourself.”

“Nope, which is why Rebekah has volunteered to be in charge of that. I’ll be overseeing it to make sure it stays on track in a weekly meeting, but she’s really the one who is going to be making it a reality, and I think she’s already enlisted April’s help. If you want to help them, that’s fine by me.”

Not interested in working for Rebekah, were we? Shocker. Searching for anything else, Caroline tried, “I also heard there were scholarships . . . Maybe I could do those?”

“That’s one we can maybe do together, but it means you won’t get one.”

Looking decidedly more chipper, she sat a little taller saying, “It’s just for books, right? Daddy can get those for me.”

“Or you could just compel them for yourself.”

“Not for books. Maybe if I don’t get a scholarship to pay for tuition and accommodation. I’ll definitely be compelling somebody if I don’t get in anywhere though.” Exhaling a harsh breath, she forced herself to ask, “Okay, now what are we going to do about Elena?”

While she might be a bit mean-spirited sometimes, and her manipulative tactics had gone through the roof, Elena hadn’t physically hurt or killed anyone yet. “Uh, well . . . I guess we’ll see how it goes tonight.”

“But we’re just going out dancing, right? We’re not going to be playing Good Vampire, Bad Hunter, are we? I’m just not sure it’s something she should do right now.”

Good Vampire, Bad Hunter wouldn’t be enough for Elena, and I’d had a good long think about Bad Vampire, Good Hunter, which is how it would end up no matter what game we started. A crowded club might be a bit too much ground for me to cover with a vampire who wouldn’t stick to any rules made at the start, or even give me the actual people she was planning to feed on. I’d also considered teaching Elena to hunt human monsters, but I wasn’t sure she had the patience to wait for a human monster before she just decided to hunt anyone, and even if I let her hunt whoever she wanted as long as she fed, healed, and then erased their memory, I wasn’t sure she’d stick to that. In fact, I could easily see her killing them and then telling me I could deal with body disposal. There needed to be some kind of structure to keep Elena from going off the rails, so letting her feed in a controlled way, like a game, actually made Bad Vampire, Good Hunter the best option, but only if I had back up, hence this not being a twin bonding experience with just the two of us and why both Rebekah and Caroline were here. 

In theory, Rebekah could compel Elena not to kill anyone, and it'd be fine, but given that Damon had mysteriously started going through his vervain stash twice as fast this last week, I suspected that Elena had taken a page from Katherine Pierce’s book and had started taking his vervain in small doses to build up her tolerance to it after I told her I was going to dart her and make her desiccate if she tried forcing me to do things for her, so Rebekah compelling her was likely out. There was no point in trying it if that was the case. It’d only make Elena act out in response. 

I could also see Rebekah joining in with Elena when it came to feeding on club-goers, so why include her at all? For one, I wouldn't have felt right about excluding her. I also knew that she wouldn't join in on a feeding frenzy if she wasn’t on Elena’s team, because she was as competitive as the girl sitting next to me, but with the strength and speed of an Original, which meant she’d be an excellent teammate when it came to shutting Elena down, and I was sure of Caroline’s restraint. If Elena thought Caroline was on her team, and Caroline was actually helping me keep her under control, then it might keep the damage tonight to a minimum. “How about Bad Vampire, Good Hunter, Secret Spy?”

“Do I even want to know what that is?”

“Probably not, but we have to give her something.”

“And why is that exactly?”

“Because I told her that I’d take her out for fun this weekend, and with drinking, dancing, and a game, the most she might get out of it is a few hours of amusement, but I have to keep my word. You don’t have to feel anything about someone to trust them.”

Understanding what I meant, Caroline said, “But it might lead to a connection of some kind.” I nodded, and she said, “Okay, I’m in.”


	85. To Bonnie

_Dear Bonnie,  
That’s the generally accepted way to start a letter, but seeing it written there, I think it comes off as both a little formal for an informal letter and yet not formal enough. It isn’t as formal as something, like ‘To The Teenage Witch Currently Checked Into Aja’s Rehab Program,’ might be, but then we aren’t exactly friends, so something with a touch more formality than ‘Hi,’ or ‘Bonnie,’ or ‘Hi Bonnie,’ is probably warranted. Is ‘Dear’ really the way you should open with someone who has killed you once, almost killed you two more times after that, tortured you, and imprisoned you in a house-sized tomb though? Perhaps ‘To My Archnemesis Bonnie,’ would be more apt. Then again, is that how you address someone you saved from a cave? Archnemesis seems like it might be a bit harsh in that instance. I think I might go with ‘To Bonnie,’ instead._

_To Bonnie,_

_Caroline thought it would be a good idea for you to hear from people you know. I agree to some extent, because I think it would be good for you to be reminded that you are not alone, and you must feel that you are, but I also think that if you are only told the positives, it would reinforce the idea that you are alone. Instead of being lifted by the optimistic notion that the world outside your witchy compound is all sunshine and rainbows, I could see it making you think that the outside world is just as calloused as the world you’ve come to know over the last month because it cares nothing for your plight and the fact that Jeremy is dead. I think that might make you dig your heels in more on all of this, because if you’re the only one who cares, then who else is there to make things right other than you? I could also see it annoying you, because when you’re grieving and feel imprisoned, how trivial must it seem to be told that Damon and I went on vacation, I learned how to ski, and I would highly recommend you give it a try? After all, you have much more important things to be doing, like resurrecting Jeremy, and how could all of us have moved on so quickly?_

_To be clear, not all of us have and are grieving in our own ways by putting some distance between ourselves and our loss and / or losses, but you not being able to see that is the danger of limiting what you’re told to positive messages only. You might try to be happy for your friends and want to wish them well in their future endeavours, but it would be purely performative. All that resentment, isolation, and grief would continue to bubble away under the surface. I just don’t think you’d be able to get out of the way of your own sorrow and frustration long enough to really do more than that try to convince yourself you’re happy for them, and when Expression is manifested by the will of the witch and hidden, tumultuous emotions can fuel that will, then it’s a potential problem in the making._

_So if focusing on the positives is out, does that mean that I should focus on the negative instead? I can’t imagine that would be any better. In fact, I don’t have to imagine it given my own experience of grieving while being imprisoned and believing that the world was about to experience an apocalypse if I didn’t get out and do something to stop it. It’s pretty damn stressful, and what you don’t need is more stress or additional reasons to make you more desperate to get out of there with your Expression powers intact._

_I should probably add that your stay with Aja could have been a lot shorter if you weren’t holding onto the notion of bringing Jeremy back, but if you didn’t have that, then it’d mean you’d have to start facing the fact that Jeremy is gone, and it’s a pretty terrible thing to confront, so I get it. I haven’t, however, changed my opinion from the cave. We need to worry about the living, Bonnie, and to use your own words against you, I was there too. There’s nothing you could have done to save Jeremy. You had a head injury. I know first-hand how disorienting those can be, what it’s like to process what’s happening slowly and at a normal speed at the same time, because you are conscious of the fact that you aren’t at your best, and you’re willing yourself to get it together, because what’s happening in front of you is urgent and something you could handle if you could just make your thoughts a little clearer or move the way you want, and you just can’t._

_I know that guilt is complicated. It isn’t easy to explain why we may feel guilt for this thing or that thing but not something else, and it isn’t something that people can talk us out of feeling when we do feel it. Grieving exacerbates it and can drive us to extremes. I presume there’s a part of you that feels like whatever price you have to pay to make this right is something you’re willing to pay, but how will you feel when you’re dead, on the Other Side, and watching the people you love live their lives is all that you can do? You won’t be there to celebrate their victories with them or to talk a problem over with them after they’ve had a bad day or be there to help them fight whatever threat they may face, and I think maybe that’s the filter through which you should read the news I bring from the outside, because I’m going to lay it all out on the table, and good or bad, there’s nothing you can do about it either way right now. If you don’t like that – well, I guess there’s still time for you to fix it before it becomes your forever reality._

_For starters, your Dad is killing it as mayor, which means he’s taken a hiatus from his job and is around all the time now. His rapport with the people in town is great. Seeing it, I think there’s a good chance he could win the next election, which would mean his hiatus will probably turn into something more permanent. He isn’t making this life change for himself. Some of it is because he knows the town has problems that he wants to fix, and I think that shows in how he approaches the Council meetings, but most of it’s for you. I don’t think his primary objective is to become your warden and keep you away from magic. I think he is just a father who believes he’s made a mistake by not being around as much as he thinks he should have been and is making moves to rectify that. That makes him a good Dad, who is feeling protective, and he clearly misses you. There’s a flicker of it there whenever one of the townsfolk ask him where you are. It’s a wistful kind of sadness that he covers pretty well while he tells them you’ve gone to visit family, the kind of look that tells me his house is lonely without you, and he’s worried about when you’ll be back._

_As for your Mom, the lines of communication with her are wide open. I don’t have any trouble getting through to her, and she usually answers on the first or second ring because she’s waiting for updates on you. She won’t call Aja any more than she was willing to walk up to Aja’s door and knock when she and your Dad brought you to Aja. She understands the witching world, and she knows she isn’t a part of it anymore. Out of respect and possibly shame, she won’t encroach on Aja’s space. She also won’t disrupt whatever Aja’s process is by talking to you directly, but if Aja can get over the fact that your Mom is a vampire now and remember that she used to be your Mom’s friend, then your Mom would like to hear from her on how you’re doing._

_Elena. Ugh. What to say about Elena? Obviously, without her humanity, she’s going to be different._

_The same selfish entitled attitude that I think all vampires without their humanity probably have is still there, but one of Elena’s character flaws before she ever even became a vampire was being self-centred. You may reflexively disagree, but ask yourself if someone who wasn’t self-centred would have asked you for help in disarming the Jonathan Gilbert device to help her vampire friends after you came back from grieving your Grams and made it clear that you didn’t want to have anything to do with vampires. Without her humanity, there’s nothing there to mute that aspect of her now, so rather than her being a murdering toddler, the way Stefan was, I suppose I’d describe her as a sneaky diva, and there are aspects of her that remind me of both myself and Katherine too. She’s just as calculating as the two of us and just as manipulative as Katherine is and as often, but half the time it’s by using the same strategy I do by being a truth-teller. I suspect she’s just as ruthless as either of us as well, and she does it all with a cold detachment that is real as opposed to the fake one Katherine has tried to achieve over the centuries and that I really only bring out when I’m in hunter-mode._

_As for how she interacts with people - well, the fact that she’s no saint has never been more apparent. She can be quite cutting in the things she says to Stefan. I know I am too, but there’s history there between Stefan and I that can explain a lot of it, and he gives as good as he gets with me. Sure, he’ll take it to a point when he knows he’s done something wrong, but he knows as well as I do that, that it’s my way of either punishing him if I can’t kill him or of trying to make a point he needs to hear, and most of the time there is humour involved even if I mean what I say. With Katherine, I’ve never been around she and Stefan together, but I would imagine that what she says to him isn’t something she means so much something she says to push his buttons and for a purpose, like distancing herself from him, making him move in a direction she wants him to go, or purely for amusement, but when Elena does it, she doesn’t mean it or not mean it, which comes across in her delivery. It throws him off his game, but she doesn’t really capitalize on whatever advantage she could have from that, like she hasn’t taken off once when he was keeping an eye on her, which means it’s just to twist the knife of him seeing her like this because she can._

_She’s intelligent and might have the ability to be an evil genius if she wasn’t also reckless, which is good for Caroline, because Elena’s decided to target her. Her first move was to turn everyone at school against Caroline. If you don’t think she could, you’d be wrong, and since I’m currently attempting to help Caroline with that issue, I’m a little concerned that Elena is going to escalate things. I have no reason to think that other than whatever game she is playing right now includes Caroline as some kind of pawn, and if that pawn isn’t doing what she wants it to do, then she’s fine with sacrificing it. I can stop her from physically harming Caroline as long as I’m prepared for it, and I am always prepared for it, so my concern isn’t for Caroline’s safety so much as her mental well-being, because there isn’t much I can do about hurtful things that Elena might say to her. I think part of it is that even with her humanity on, Caroline annoys Elena, and Elena has nothing to keep her from acting on that now, but the bigger problem is that I think Elena is attempting to push Caroline out of her way, so she can be the best sister that ever was in an effort to get me to do things for her and make me like her better like this._

_In some ways, that’s a good thing, because it means that she is so sure that I will be able to keep anyone from forcing her to flip her switch that she’s willing to keep herself within the bounds of what I find acceptable (which is in no way something you would find acceptable) to make sure I don’t turn on her. It’s keeping her in check, so I’m conflicted. Does she really need to be fixed right now if she isn’t killing people or being a danger to herself?_

_I know it’s difficult for the people around her to see an automaton in her place, but I am almost certain that attempting to push her into flipping her switch might cause her to either kill someone or do herself harm out of spite. On the other hand, while I think the real Elena (without the judgement of you or Stefan) could live with doing things, like biting people, as long as she doesn’t kill them (I know you don’t want to hear that, but she is a vampire now, and that’s just the way it is with vampires not named Stefan), I’m not sure how many things she might do between now and when she does turn her humanity on that would upset her when she goes back to being her. Either things continue as they are, and it’s not that bad, or unknown future actions she takes will be worse than what she’s done so far. I'm about 50/50 on which it will be, but if she does get worse, it would mean that the sooner her switch is flipped back, the less time she has to do something truly awful, and the easier it will be on her to have all those human emotions come flooding back at once. Obviously, nobody wants a situation where she keeps that switch off until it breaks, which happened at around 300 years of age for Alice. It’s just a little difficult to know what to do, so I’ll probably continue to monitor the situation for now and make a decision on it when the time seems right._

_With Caroline, she’s been struggling with you being gone and Elena being the new Elena, but I think she’s starting to dig herself out of it. Tyler is learning how to play the drums, and he, Caroline, and I are starting a band. Our first practice is this Sunday, and our first gig is going to be a graduation party that Tyler is planning to throw at his house. They’re both really excited about it, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she goes into greater detail in her letter about it. In addition to that, she’s joined a new Parkour and Freerunning Club that Tyler, Rebekah, and I started at school._

_We have 20 members and a bunch of spectators at our meetings. It’s a big enough success that it might help her with her image problem. She’s only going to be helping me on a two-person team with the new scholarship program that is part of the club. She doesn’t hold any official positions. I think it's important for her to learn how to be a part of something instead of being in charge of it. Hopefully, it’ll allow people to see her in a more favourable light that is more in line with who she is rather than the dictator she turns herself into when she’s leading a project._

_Despite all that, plus cheerleading and school, Caroline has still found time to apply to colleges for you (Whitmore and Duke), so be prepared for that. I think that she needs to organize and plan when she’s stressed to help her calm down, so that’s part of it, but I also think it’s her way of feeling close to you and helping you when she wants to do more. She really misses you, and I know that doesn’t excuse it, but she means well. Also, if there are any problems because of it, she can compel them away, but I don’t particularly think it should come to that. It might be the furthest thing on your mind, and you might not feel up for it right now, but it wouldn’t be the worst idea to maybe take some time to fill the applications out yourself or at least write up a personal story essay and have Aja mail it to Caroline, so it’ll be in your own words rather than anyone else's._

_As for Matt, he’s Matt - still human, still judgemental even though he’s completely lost when it comes to the supernatural, and oh so very annoyed that I’m only going to tutor him on his schoolwork instead of train him at either freerunning, using a crossbow, or anything that could be construed as training for hunting a vampire. I just don’t think it’s a good idea. Look at where it got Jeremy._

_What else? Oh. On Saturday, Caroline, Elena, Rebekah, and I had a night out together. I think it’s what all four of us needed for different reasons, but it wasn’t the kind of night out that you would have been okay with in any way. There was drinking (not by me), dancing, and a game not unlike Good Vampire, Bad Hunter that we played at Whitmore that one time. I call it Bad Vampire, Good Hunter, Secret Spy, and it was a little darker shade of grey than you would have been comfortable allowing. Elena bit a few people, but she didn’t kill anyone, and I didn’t have to nail her foot to the floor or have Rebekah compel her to accomplish that, so I think the night was a success. If you disagree . . . well, you weren’t around to give your input, and you’re going to hate that I’m thinking about taking Elena out to teach her how to hunt the way my Mom used to hunt in a couple of weeks too._

_Overall, you should know that since you’ve been gone the number of people who have died of supernatural occurrences or who have been turned in Mystic Falls is 0. You should also know that I am writing this from somewhere nearby. I’m here to check in and make sure you aren’t forced into being cleansed of Expression against your will. The moon reached its apex a while ago, and nothing happened, except Aja asked if you were cold and wanted a blanket while everyone sat outside and talked around the fire, which means that while I plan to continue checking in on you sporadically, I’m leaving you here for now, hence the letter. I wouldn’t need to write it if you were coming with me. I have one each from Caroline, Matt, your Dad, and Stefan. There was no point in asking Elena, so you’re stuck with getting one from me instead to get that number up to a solid 5._

_Now, how to close? There’s ‘All the best,’ ‘Kind Regards,’ and ‘Yours truly,’ but I think I’m just going to go with this:_

_Eve_

_P.S. Aja, I’m pretty sure the envelop said this was for Bonnie’s eyes only, so if you’ve gotten this far, then you’re as nosey of a witch as I thought, and as a penalty, I have a few questions that I would like answered. 1) What’s the deal with unicorns? I was reading an ancient book the other day that said witches hunted them to extinction for their blood to use in spells, and doppelganger blood was the next best thing to use as a substitute, because while it’s extremely rare, at least doppelgangers still exist. Is that true? 2) Is it also true that a person can’t be compelled if they have another person’s spirit or another entity sharing their body with them? 3) After reading all of this, and I’m going to admit right now that Klaus has become one of my favourite people to add to the plethora of vampire news in this letter, was this what you had in mind when you got involved with helping my parents all those years ago? I think your interpretation of what you were shown was off, or things were added to it, because you saw an opportunity to make the future go the way you wanted it to go, so which was it, or was it something else entirely?_

Reading through my letter again, I was pretty sure it had everything I wanted to say to Bonnie in there. With Aja, there was really only one of those questions that I had any interest in her answering. I considered adding another one, but if I took much longer, Damon was going to come looking for me. We had a pair of walkie talkies, so we could check in with one another, and had been using morse code to keep the noise levels down while I was near the cabin, but I’d let him know I was going off line when I started writing the letter, and that had to have been a while ago now.

Folding the paper, I stuffed it into the envelope I’d brought and wrote _FOR BONNIE’S EYES ONLY – EVE_ on it in big block letters, then sealed it before removing the headphones of my parabolic listening device. Putting it into my satchel next to the walkie talkies, I let the strap over my shoulder take the bag’s weight and dropped down from the tree branch I’d used to get a better view of the cabin. A brief pause to make sure nobody had heard that, and I reached for my compound bow. Taking the other letters out of my satchel as I made my around to the front of the house, I wrapped them around the shaft of an arrow near the tip, put mine on the outside, and tightly tied them to it by wrapping a black ribbon I had left over from the vampire convention invitations around them. After nocking the arrow on the bow string, I aimed high to account for the additional weight at the front of the arrow, felt a calming presence behind me, and let the arrow fly. 

I heard a loud thwack as it hit the door and saw a light inside turn on before pivoting back behind a nearby tree. It took about half a minute after the front door swung open to get a response, I guess because Aja saw the letters on the arrow and had to unwrap them and then uncurl them enough to see what they were and who might have sent them. “You know, I take it back, your Daddy at least had some manners. If you’ve got somethin’ to say, there are better ways to say it than by shooting an arrow in my door at 3 o’clock in the morning.” I actually thought it sent a very strong message in a way that words didn’t. I was keeping an eye on things, and she needed to have as much patience as was required to wait Bonnie out, not just force Bonnie into it when she got tired of waiting. There were only two reasons she should have to attempt to force Bonnie into anything. If Bonnie became a real danger to Aja and her coven, I felt like Aja would be perfectly justified in doing whatever she had to do to protect herself and the others. The other reason was if Bonnie became a serious danger to herself, and the only chance she might have was to force her to get rid of the Expression before she was ready. Any other reason was unacceptable. 

I remained hidden, and eventually Aja sighed. “They might do her some good. I’ll see that she gets them . . . Now, get home. A girl your age must have school in a few hours.“ 

There was a pregnant pause, and the light in the woods dimmed before going almost completely dark again as she closed the door, and a few seconds later, Damon stepped out from behind a tree a little ways back, making me smile and whisper, “So impatient.”

Looking past me at the house, he waved me towards him, to let me know I was in the clear, and waited until I was about halfway to him to say, “I think you might be slipping. I’ve been here for a while.”

Starting with that one straight away, were we? He must have gotten super bored, not that I blamed him. I think there was a part of him expecting this to be more than it’d been too. A month without much action was getting to both of us a little even if he downplayed it in favour of pretending like me not finding trouble was the greatest thing in the world. Bet if I asked him if he wanted to go on a hunting trip this weekend, he’d be up for it. Hm. Maybe I should. I could dig out one of my files on a potential case that wasn’t too far away, so we could leave on Friday and be back by Sunday for band practice. “You’re lucky I was expecting you, or that arrow would have gone right in your chest. I knew someone was behind me and that it was you.”

Taking my hand as I got to him so he could walk me away from the coven a little faster, he teased back, “You know, you have a habit of saying things like that, but I don’t think they’re true. I’m just too good for you to catch.”

“You are quiet when you want to be. I’ll give you that, but there are other things that give you away.”

“Like what?”

“Can’t give away all my trade secrets.” 

“Sounds to me like something someone would say if they were covering for the fact their trade secrets don’t work on me.”

My instincts could be spotty with him sometimes, but not when I was in a situation where I was hyper-focused on my surroundings the way I was tonight. “All right, fine. There are lots of subconscious things that go into it, like you blocking the sounds behind you with your body and that changing what I can hear, but it just feels, overall, like there’s a change of pressure in the air around me, like a space where I was alone is no longer empty, and even if you were far enough away that I didn’t feel that, then I can still definitely feel eyes on me from a distance. I was expecting you, so that probably explains how I knew it was you, but it also just felt like you.”

“And what, exactly, do I feel like to you?”

“Calming, but in a way that is specific to you, like the person I want to see most in the world has arrived, so I can relax.” 

I looked up at him and caught the tail end of his flicker of a smile. “Maybe now, but there’s no way you knew I was there every single time when we first met.”

“Pretty sure the rocks you threw at my window were a dead give away.” 

With a short chuckle, he looked down at me. “I was thinking more like that time at Miss Mystic Falls.”

“You came clomping through the woods on your search to find me, and you had to search, because you didn’t tell me where to meet you at 3, just the Lockwood’s estate, and it’s a big estate. You stopped when you finally did see me, vampire sprinted just to the right of the limb I was on, and waited a good minute for me to notice before deciding to say something. I was just more interested in seeing if that waitress dropped her drinks.” 

His eyebrows arched. “I think you’re making that up.”

“Am I?” 

“You’ve had enough time to work all that out without any of it actually being true.” 

“Are you sure about that?” His eyes narrowed in thought, and I said, “Tell me, Mr. Perfect Vampire Memory, did I flinch when you made your presence known?”

“You don’t flinch.” 

“Because my instincts prepare me for when a vampire is there, and I knew it was you because I was too well hidden for it to have been anyone else.” 

“Uh huh, and what about the time you threw a stake at my head?”

“Okay, I might have been mid-throw with the stake when I realized it was you that time, but I course-corrected enough to throw it somewhere non-lethal. Still, it would’ve given you a killer headache if you hadn’t caught it, so maybe I should make it up to you.”

Stopping, he turned to pull me closer and suggestively said, “I couldn't agree more. What do you propose?”

I bit my bottom lip to keep from smiling and answered, “How about I pick a case from my files, and we go on a hunt this weekend?”

As he slumped, I laughed, and he said, “Not exactly the way I thought you could make it up to me.” 

“It’s better, right?”

At my enthusiasm, he looked to the side to consider it a little more. “Alone time with you. Bit of adventure . . . I haven’t killed anyone in far too long.“ Turning his attention back down to me, he conceded, “I’m liking it more by the second.”

“Same here.” 

Smirking, he responded, “You’re gonna have a competition on your hands. Just because you’re a hunter doesn’t mean you’re the only one who gets the prize.”

“Oh, you are so on.”


	86. Strictly Business

Walking into our room at the B&B we’d just checked into in Easton, Maryland, I studied the case file in one hand while pulling the strap of my duffel bag off over my head with the other and deposited the bag on the floor. It was a small town, but still had over twice the number of people living in it that Mystic Falls did. The town itself had a normal number of missing person’s reports for a town its size. Even the areas surrounding the town didn’t have a bump in the number of people who had disappeared, so why did I think this was a case? Because the number of people who had gone missing while going from point A to B and who may have travelled through Easton on their journeys was actually quite high, not that it would have drawn anyone’s attention, necessarily, because there had been no confirmed sightings of these people being in or near the town, but if you looked at where the people who had disappeared started their journeys, where they were going, and drew a line between the two, whether they were heading from east to west, west to east, north to south, south to north, their paths would have taken them either through or by this town. The disappearances all seemed to happen at night, often coincided with one of those summer festivals that are typical of small towns, and this had been happening for decades. I thought there was something to that. 

The door behind me closed, and there was a rush of air that brushed past me a moment before Damon’s arms wrapped around my waist. His face nuzzled into my neck, and I felt his lips lightly graze my skin. My body may have wanted to melt back into him, but my mind had my head turning in his direction while I said, “Uh, we’re here to hunt, not go antiquing.”

Pulling away, he left his arms where they were and whined, “Oh come on. It’s a vampire, so why don’t we just take the extra time you would have spent reading through that file to come to the same conclusion, and put it to better use?”

Better use? I understood that time we spent alone at home was never really alone time considering the exceptional hearing of the two vampires who lived with us, and I understood that whenever we did have a chance to be alone at home, there was always a purveying sense of edginess hanging in the background because our vampire siblings, their friends, and their enemies were all magnets for every kind of trouble under the sun, but this wasn’t one of our vacations to get away from that. There was something in this town that was disappearing people. Our heads needed to be on the target until we were sure that it was no longer a threat. “Because maybe it is a vampire, maybe it isn’t. Whoever it is, I need to get an idea of who and what they are before I ever come face to face with them. Walking into the complete unknown is a good way to die, and you're not here to be my muscle so I can slack on that. The hunt comes first. Alone time is what happens when we’re done.”

Tilting my head back onto his chest to look up at him, I caught that his eyes had darted to the ceiling in frustration and asked, "Too militant?" 

When his gaze flitted back down in my direction, a smirk had started to creep across his features, so it was less with annoyance than amusement that he let me go and plucked the file from my hands, saying, "Only if you're not trying to turn me on. I do love when you take charge." Moving around me to lay himself out on the bed with his new reading material, he waited until I'd turned to get my laptop before adding, “I am wondering why you brought me though.” I looked back at him, and he clarified, “If this trip is strictly for business, not pleasure, then why bring me at all for something you know you can handle yourself, and why do I get the feeling that you’re waiting for me to catch up?”

“Oh . . . because I am.” His eyebrow arched, and I exhaled a laugh. “You might be a vampire, Damon, but this is my area of expertise.”

“So, is this some kind of test to see how well I do?”

“No. I mean, it would be good to find out how we work together on something like this, but not really. It’s more like . . . my hunting is different than your hunting, and it isn’t the same as dealing with the things we have to deal with in Mystic Falls or because of the inhabitants there. The skillset is the same, but there’s just something inherently different about hunting strangers to help other strangers.”

“A teachable moment.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He smiled to himself while settling back against the headboard to relax and turned his attention back to the file saying, “Lessons on how not to get caught by a hunter . . . I like that.” If that was the only thing he took away from this, then I was good with that. It might actually be the only thing he could take away from all of this, because there was a decent chance that the missing people in my file had been taken by a vampire that was already dead if the vampire in question had been from either Kol or Finn’s lines. That was something I’d realized when I was going through my old cases. Thus far, I’d been primarily focused on what I would classify as the good vampires being wiped out, but they’d obviously been killed off right along with the bad. How many of my old cases were now obsolete because the culprits had been taken out in one fell swoop by my sister? 

I’d have to wait for years on most of my cases to see if there was still anything to them. Whenever I used to pick up on a killing spree as it was happening, I'd either tell my Dad about them, and he and I would do those hunts together if he thought there was merit to them, or I'd sneak out to deal with them myself when I got a little older, but with the cases I’d held onto over the years, the patterns of missing people or animal attacks in those areas were more spread out over time the way the disappearances in Savannah had been. Mystic Falls would actually fit in with that group of cases too, because most of the killings or disappearances in that town coincided with the times Damon and Stefan came back for a visit, and I thought that the same was probably true of the unknown vampires responsible for many of the cases I had left. They’d moved on to somewhere else by the time I’d picked up on them, and where they went next was anyone’s guess, but they’d be back because they had some connection to the town, so I’d be ready for them when that happened . . . or I would be if they weren’t all dead now. Honestly, and it was purely selfish of me to think this way, because it ultimately meant people in the future wouldn’t fall victim to those vampires if they were gone, but it all left me feeling a little disillusioned about my place in the world as a hunter, like all the time I’d spent piecing together clues and patterns when I was growing up had been for nothing.

This case was a bit different though. Rather than a spike in missing persons cases happening once every few years or once a decade or longer in Easton, the victims went missing once a year. Of course it was possible that whoever was taking these people was only stopping by once a year to do it and then moved on somewhere else, but I didn’t think that was necessarily true. Why be so careful about covering their tracks if they weren’t sticking around the area? In fact, the person or people responsible for these disappearances had left almost no evidence that anything was happening here. That made it a more difficult case and meant that it was going to take more investigation than the one in Savannah had, but it provided me with an opportunity to find out sooner rather than later how much time I'd really wasted on these cases.

I got to work using my laptop to research a place we could start, and 5 minutes later, Damon said, “Looking at this map with all the lines, it’s clear there’s something going on here, but how’d you pick up on it?”

“Um.” Turning from the desk to look at him, I rested my forearm on the back of my chair and answered, “For as long as I can remember, any time a person went missing near where I lived, I’d look to see if it was a one off or more of a regular occurrence, but at some point, I started doing a thorough background search of an area within a day or two of moving there.”

“You lived in Maryland?”

“A couple times.”

“So, a news report tipped you off?”

“Not on this one. This one, I was looking at missing persons reports on police websites. There were no missing persons from Easton, and there was no proof that any of these people went through here, so there was nothing on the site. I broadened the search out, and that's when I noticed the pattern.”

“Wait. You mean you actually lived here – in this town?”

“For a month or two, yeah.”

Sitting up to swing his legs over the side of the bed, he put the file down saying, “I want to see it.”

“See what?”

“Where you lived.”

“Why?”

With a shrug, he got to his feet. “It’s a chance to see one of the many places that went into making my girlfriend who she is today. Why wouldn’t I want to see that?”

Because we were here to hunt, not skip down memory lane. “I don’t remember where it is.”

At that, he paused, and his eyebrows rose in doubt. “You lived here for a month or two, and you’re telling me that the girl who claims you need to have a great memory to hunt and who also just so happens to be a hunter doesn’t remember where she lived.”

“What can I say? Everything looks different when you’re 11 or 12. I might be able to find it by landmarks, like if I saw a shop or park or something that I recognized, and went from there, but other than that . . . I've got nothin’.”

“Fine. The town isn’t that big. We’ll drive around until we find one of your landmarks.”

“We only have tonight, tomorrow, and part of Sunday to figure this out before we have to go home.”

“From what I can tell, these disappearances all happen in the summer, so we’ve got time. If we don’t figure it out this weekend, we’ll come back and keep coming back until we do.”

“But . . . “ He paused to wait me out, and finally, I sighed. “I need to know if this is still a case.”

It took him a few seconds to understand what I meant, but as soon as he did, his posture shifted into one that was almost apologetic. Looking over his shoulder at the folder on the bed, he asked, “You were 11 or 12 when you put all that together?” When his attention came back to me, I nodded. “Must have spent a lot of time in that house doing nothing but that.” 

“When I wasn’t doing schoolwork, yeah, this is pretty much what I was focused on with the rest of my time.”

Going back to sit on the bed, he picked the file up again and opened it to give it another look. “So, I guess we can rule out your Mom as a possible suspect. She wasn't a vampire then.” 

He didn’t particularly want to study up on all the missing people, which is largely what the case file was, but if he was willing to get involved by brainstorming on it, I was more than a little happy with that. Smiling briefly to myself at his attempt to take a more genuine interest, I went to sit next to him saying. “Yeah, she’s definitely out as a suspect.”

Still perusing the file, he quietly said, “It’s definitely a vampire given how far back this goes. Why would you think it isn’t?”

“I’m pretty sure it is, but how have they managed to stay here this long without anyone noticing they haven’t aged?”

“They may not stay here all year long.”

“I think they do. Why go to this much trouble to hide their tracks if they’re going to leave as soon as they get their summer snack?”

His eyes lifted from the file as he thought about it. “So, what, they only let themselves indulge in fresh blood straight from the tap once a year?”

He flicked a look in my direction, and I said, “Yeah, I think whoever it is has a lot of control.”

“Or needs to have it . . . what if they’re a ripper? Maybe this vampire thinks that by giving themselves a treat once a year for not killing every human they see, they're able to use that reward to curb their cravings the rest of the time.”

“So, in the meantime, how do they feed?”

“We could stop by the sheriff’s office to see if they have a lot of animal mutilations.”

“They wouldn’t keep track of wild animal mutilations.” 

“But wild animals around here only get so big. I’m thinking those wouldn’t work long term with a ripper that keeps falling off the wagon once a year. It's the worst of both worlds, not learning how to deal with the cravings by living in moderation and not going completely cold turkey. If Stefan did that, all he'd be thinking about those last few months before the year was up is human blood and when he was going to have it again. If this is a ripper, and that's what they're doing, then livestock might be big enough to get them through.”

“So look for farmers reporting wolves or coyotes killing their animals. If your theory holds, there should be some starting in the spring and an increase leading up to the summer when the vampire’s cravings make them need more and more blood . . . the same might be true of the blood bank in the hospital too, whoever this is wouldn’t necessarily just stick to animals because Stefan does.”

“If they’re living off blood bags then they should be able control it year round, so why be so precise about when they do feed from the tap?”

“Because maybe they have to for some reason, like maybe there’s an agreement of some kind that says you can only feed at this time, and if you keep it to that, we’ll leave you alone.”

“You think someone is keeping this vampire on a leash?”

“We still don't know how it is that the locals haven’t noticed someone that isn’t aging.”

“So they’re in on it?”

“Maybe . . . or maybe the vampire aging isn’t noticed by the locals, because the vampire is literally being kept on a leash and is only allowed up for air once a year.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“It isn’t a million miles away from what happened to you when the Augustine’s had you, is it? They brought you up once a year to show you off to the others in the know, right?”

Sitting back in thought, he blinked a couple times, like there were memories flashing behind his eyes, and looking confused, he asked, “Wait, so is this a rescue mission or a hunt?”

“Won’t know until we actually start investigating.”

“But I escaped the first chance I got, so why would this vampire just go back to whoever had them for the last year? And this has been going on for decades, so is this vampire just passed down to the next generation in a will, like some kind of inheritance?”

He seemed genuinely disgusted by the idea of that, and it was kind of nice to see him take interest in the potential plight of another, but the truth is, that we didn’t know if that’s what was happening around here. “I suppose it’s also possible that none of this has anything to do with a vampire. It could be a multi-generational family of serial killers, or a multi-generational coven of witches that is into sacrificial magic and uses the missing people for rituals during the summer solstice, because this area does have a history of witches, and it’s always possible that it could be my personal favourite.” He looked at me, and I tried not to smile before saying, “There is a wormhole near here that goes to another universe, and these people are driving into it, never to be seen again.” When all he did was blink, like he wasn’t sure what to do with that, I finally laughed before saying, “It’s as likely as anything else until we actually start investigating. First, we go to the sheriff to see about the animal mutilations, then we go to the hospital to see what the blood situation is, and then we’ll have a better idea of where to go from there.”

“Or we split those tasks and get this done faster. You can go ask the sheriff if a larger than normal number of cows go missing in the springtime, and I’ll go to the hospital. Then we can reconvene at the bar.”

“Uh, yeah, I’m not letting you go anywhere without me if it’s possible that there’s a family of vampire kidnappers on the loose.” It was his turn to try not to grin, and it came across as him finding something I’d said endearing, but I’d meant it, so I ignored him thinking that me being protective of him was cute and pointed to the file folder saying, “And as for bars, there’s only ever been one local who has gone missing, so I say we go to the bar where he was drinking the night he disappeared and take it from there.”

His eyes tightened somewhat while he thought about it. “All right, but before the sheriff, we’re getting dinner, and between the hospital and the bar, we are finding where you used to live so I can see where little Evie grew up.”

I dryly replied, “For a month,” and his eyes gleamed as he gave into a smile that time. “Or two, and if it was a part of your life, I want to see it.”

He seemed to be turning this into a date, and I didn’t want there to be any distractions. On the other hand, I should probably eat, and if we happened to stumble upon a monument that looked familiar, I might be tempted to find the house where I’d lived just to see if it was the way I remembered it being. “Okay, but we’re only spending half an hour on it, and then we’re going to the bar. We can always look for it again before we go.”

Emboldened by my conditional acquiescence, he added, “And tonight when we get back from the bar, if you’re going to give up sleep to do anything, then I want you all to myself. No researching.”

“You are so trying to turn this into a date.”

Tilting forward to touch his forehead to mine, he responded, “Hey, you're the one who said it’d be good to find out how we work together on things like this. Can’t turn it down until you’ve tried it.”

“Well, I can.”

“But you won’t.” 

Yeah, he raised an interesting point about me needing to be open to all avenues to see what worked best for us. “No, I won’t.” He exhaled a triumphant laugh, and I quickly added, “But if anything happens to you – “

“Or you . . . we’ll keep it to strictly business in the future. Promise.”

Future? I mean, we’d talked about it – hunting in New York, or it came up when we were talking about things we’d do when we were finally free of Mystic Falls – but it suddenly occurred to me that whether we hunted my way or his, this trip was the start of reinventing hunting as I knew it. Hunting, as a separate thing to what we faced in Mystic Falls, was so intrinsic to who I was as an individual that having that change by bringing a full-time partner into it made the whole proposition of him being here seem much more intimate than I’d intended for it to be and would take our relationship to the next level in a way I hadn’t thought it would when I invited him. I wondered if he was aware of that. I think he must be, or he wouldn’t have asked why I’d brought him. If that’s what’d been behind his question, then my answer hadn’t been the greatest, but he didn’t want to come right out and say that this was actually a big step for us, because he didn’t want to spook me. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you mean that promise?”

“1 if anything happens to me. 10 if anything happens you. I’d put it at about a 5.”

Then we were pretty much in agreement on that, except in reverse, which was a good start, and you know, I didn’t necessarily feel like running for the door right now . . . okay, maybe a little, but I also wanted to see how we did . . . if there was even anything here to hunt.


End file.
